Fish meal Archives - Saving Seafood

Bountiful Bunker? Advocates Clash with Big Fish Oil in New York Harbor

September 10, 2018 — Advocacy groups are sounding the alarm on Virginia-based fishing fleets coming into the New York bight to harvest menhaden — a bait fish better known as “bunker” — but NOAA Fisheries says the species is not at risk of overfishing.

The boats work for Omega Protein, a company based in Reedville, Virginia, that runs the largest menhaden fishing operation on the east coast.

Menhaden are abundant now, but they’d been severely overfished in the past and advocacy groups like Menhaden Defenders and Gotham Whale are concerned about that happening again — especially since whales have returned to New York City waters. The cetaceans feed on menhaden, and fewer fish could mean fewer whale sightings, they say.

Advocates also worry about by-catch. The boats use huge purse seines that round up millions of fish at a time, and there’s concern that dolphins and other marine life could get caught up.

In a press release, Omega Protein charged that advocates are making “false statements” about their fleet, noting that there’s currently no concern about bunker overfishing and that their operations are completely legal. The company turns menhaden into commodities for fish oil supplements, dog food, fish meal, and other products.

Jennifer Goebel, a spokesperson for NOAA Fisheries, confirmed that there’s no current threat of overfishing for menhaden.

“There has been concern over the years from certain environmental groups regarding localized depletion in Chesapeake Bay, but studies have not found any evidence that localized depletion is occurring,” she said in an email. “The coastwide assessment shows the Atlantic menhaden stock is not overfished and overfishing is not occurring.”

She added that Omega Protein “follow[s] the schools and right now, if those schools are off New York, that’s where an industry vessel could be fishing.”

Read the full story at New York Media Boat

IFFO responds to “unjustified and damaging” criticism of aquaculture’s fishmeal, fish oil use

February 15, 2018 — Fishmeal and fish oil are and will continue to be efficient and sustainable aquaculture feed components if they are responsibly sourced and used strategically, while not using them could compromise fish health and lead to unnecessary waste, IFFO, The Marine Ingredients Organisation has stressed.

In response to an article published by National Geographic, titled “Why salmon eating insects instead of fish is better for environment,” which discusses fishmeal and fish oil replacement in salmon feed, Andrew Mallison, director general of IFFO, said the total replacement of fishmeal and fish oil, as called for in the article, was unjustified and damaging to the fish farming industry.

Mallison said that while IFFO agreed with the need for additional feed options in aquaculture to ensure the growth of “this vital industry,” the article quoted information that was both out-of-date and incorrect.

The improvement in management of wild-capture fisheries has ensured that in recent years stocks are in fact steady and not declining, according to the FAO’s State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2016, he said.

“While catches of some small pelagic species used to produce fishmeal and fish oil are volatile, this is due to environmental fluctuation with permitted catches being varied in line with biomass abundance to protect the stocks. These small pelagic species are often not as palatable, spoil quickly and are less popular compared to other local fish, but can be turned into highly nutritious feed,” Mallison said. “Further evidence of sustainability in the production of marine ingredients is that over 45 percent of the global production of fishmeal and fish oil is now independently certified as being safe and environmentally responsible, including in its sourcing of raw materials, a figure that far exceeds any other source of feed ingredient.”

Regarding the efficiency of the use of fishmeal and fish oil, Mallison highlighted that the latest FIFO (fish in: fish out ratios) using 2015 data showed a conversion rate of one kilogram of wild fish used in feed creates 1.22 kilograms of farmed salmon, demonstrating that farmed salmon now produce globally more consumable protein than is used in feed.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Shift to plant-based fish feed could hurt health, environment

March 25, 2016 — In an effort to make fish farming more sustainable, the aquaculture industry has been cutting back on feed made of other fish and replacing it with plant-based alternatives. But a new study warns that may make the fish less healthy to eat and have negative impacts on the environment.

Many fish species that are farmed, including Atlantic salmon, the most farmed fish in Canada, are carnivores that eat feed traditionally based on fish meal and fish oil. Environmental advocates such as Greenpeace have criticized the practice as unsustainable, as wild fish that could be used to feed people or maintain wild populations need to be caught in order to produce the fish food.

“They realized that we’re grinding up a lot of fish to feed the fish,” said Jillian Fry, director of the Public Health and Sustainable Aquaculture Project at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md.

The price of fish meal and fish oil has also increased with demand.

Omega-3 concerns

The study said the use of plant-based ingredients could reduce the amount of healthy omega-3 fatty acids in fish – one of the things that makes fish like salmon attractive and tasty to consumers.

While this is something salmon farmers are aware of and trying to avoid, Fry says, omnivorous fish that already eat more plant material and have less omega-3s, such as tilapia, may end up with even lower levels.

“Anywhere it’s decreasing in our diet, we need to pay attention.”

Read the full story at CBC News

Study eyes fisheries for menhaden— a key forage fish

March 21, 2016 — Gloucester, Mass. — Interstate fishing managers will commission a study of the commercial fisheries for Atlantic menhaden, an important forage fish that is caught all along the East Coast.

Menhaden are an important bait fish and are also caught for use as fish oil and fish meal. States from Maine to Florida have been the site of commercial fisheries for menhaden in the past ten years.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The San Francisco Chronicle

Farm-Raised Seafoods Fed Plant-Based Diet Have Lower Levels of Omega-3 Fatty Acids

March 14, 2016 — A change in how farmers are raising seafood is expected to affect human nutrition, a new study found.

According to the research team from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment and McGill University, there has been a global shift in the type of feed that is being used in fish farming.

The team explained that prior to this shift, farm-raised seafood ate feed made from fish meal and fish oil, which came from wild fish. However, since catching wild fish to use as feed was no longer sustainable, farmers have been relying on plant-based options, such as soybean meal. The researchers noted in 2008, aquaculture feed contained 50 percent more soybean meal than fish meal. They estimated that from 2008 to 2020, the use of plant-based ingredients can increase by 124 percent.

Read the full story at HNGN

Aquaculture Exchange: Andrew Jackson, IFFO

November 12, 2015 — Despite great advances in aquafeed formulations aimed at lowering aquaculture’s dependence on wild-capture fishery resources, there is little doubt that fishmeal and fish oil still play a crucial role in the global seafood supply. The highly nutritious marine ingredients are chief components in the production of the world’s animal protein supply — some 20 percent of the global fishmeal supply goes to pig farmers, while high-quality fish oil remains in strong demand for direct human consumption as well.

The shape of the world’s reduction fisheries, therefore, has never been more important. Andrew Jackson, technical director at IFFO (The Marine Ingredients Organisation), recently spoke with the Advocate about the latest in reduction fisheries, the ever-increasing part that processing byproducts has to play and why fishmeal is so hard to replace, even for fish considered to be largely herbivorous.

Jackson announced earlier this year that he would step down from his post as technical director at the end of 2015, after nearly a decade of service. He will, however, take up the reins as chairman of the IFFO RS (Responsible Supply Certification Program) independent standards board. “It is my hope and intention to keep serving,” he said of his upcoming two-year appointment.

WRIGHT: What is the difference between “mining” a resource like a forage or reduction fishery and “cropping” it?

JACKSON: People often associate fishing with removing a resource as you would with mining. Like with coal, once it’s taken out of the ground, that’s it, unless you’ve got several million years to wait. You’re not going to get anything back; it’s a one-use resource. You can look at fisheries as, we’ve got this valuable thing, not in the ground but swimming around in the sea, and we can go out there, and we can take it out and we call sell it all and it’s worth this much. You can look at it like that.

But how much better to crop it, as you would a sustainably managed forest. You take it out at a rate at which it can be replenished by nature. That’s what the best management does. And that is when you become truly sustainable. In my book, sustainable means you can keep doing the same thing over and over again, year after year, and it’s always there. That’s what we should be looking to do, in any fishery, whether we’re taking it out for direct or indirect human consumption.

Read the full story at The Advocate

VIRGINIA: Special Investigation: Big fight over little fish

November 12, 2015 — REEDVILLE, Va. – Small business owners along the Chesapeake Bay are concerned that commercial fishing by Omega Protein is hurting their livelihood. Both rely on catching menhaden, a small bony fish that is valuable to Omega for its oil and bone meal, as well as for bait to charter boat captains and crabbers.

Omega has fished for menhaden out of Reedville since the 1870’s. It hauls in millions of them each weekday during a fishing season that is quota-based and runs roughly from May to November.

10 On Your Side visited the Reedville operation and spoke with several employees about the company’s importance to the community. We also met with a charter boat captain who is convinced that Omega’s large hauls are hurting his business along with hundreds of others – marinas, crabbers, tackles shops, etc.

“Used to be these creeks would just be chocked full of menhaden flipping all over the surface,” said Chris Newsome, owner of Bay Fly Fishing in Gloucester. Newsome’s charter clients fish for striped bass, bluefish, speckled trout and redfish, and they feed on menhaden. “They’ve definitely become a lot harder to find over the years.”

Read the full story at WAVY

Aquaculture And Marine Ingredients Video Premieres At IFFO Annual Conference

October 7, 2015 — After decades of growth, the aquaculture industry continues to expand as a crucial segment of the global seafood market, and sustainably harvested fish meal and fish oil are fueling this growth. In a new video produced by Saving Seafood and released in partnership with IFFO, the trade association representing the marine ingredients industry, and Omega Protein, aquaculture industry leaders and experts discuss the future of fish meal, fish oil and farmed seafood. The video, which premiered on 28th September at IFFO’s Annual Conference in Berlin, is also being made available to the public.

View the video, “A Closer Look at Aquaculture and Marine Ingredients,” here

“People talk about fish meal replacements; there really aren’t fish meal replacements, because no one ingredient is going to have everything that fish meal has,” said Dr. Rick Barrows, a Fish Nutritionist at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service Fish Technology Center in Bozeman, Montana.

Fish meal and fish oil are irreplaceable because they are some of the best sources of the proteins and essential nutrients that are vital to healthy farmed fish. Some of these nutrients, especially omega-3 fatty acids, are an increasingly important part of human diets as well, having been linked to improved heart health and better brain function.

“You and I, like fish, need 40 essential micronutrients,” says Dr. Michael Rubino, Director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Office of Aquaculture. “Forage fish, in the form of fish meal and fish oil happens to be the perfect combination of those micronutrients.”

Read the full story at IFFO

VIDEO: Sustainable Aquaculture Takes Center Stage at International Conference

There are no replacements for fish meal and fish oils in aquaculture feeds
Fish meal and fish oil are supplied from sustainable marine ingredient fisheries
Government labs are studying how to put sustainable supplies to best use
Just 5 million tons of fish meal and fish oil help produce 300 million tons of food for humans

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) – September 28, 2015 – After decades of growth, the aquaculture industry continues to expand as a crucial segment of the global seafood market, and sustainably harvested fish meal and fish oil are fueling this growth. In a new video produced by Saving Seafood and released in partnership with IFFO, the trade association representing the marine ingredients industry, and Omega Protein, aquaculture industry leaders and experts discuss the future of fish meal, fish oil, and farmed seafood. The video, which premiers today at IFFO’s Annual Conference in Berlin, is also being made available to the public.

Marine ingredient fisheries, like the menhaden fishery in the U.S., provide a steady supply of fish meal and fish oil to meet the needs of the aquaculture industry. Dr. Jeffrey Silverstein, the USDA National Program Leader of Aquaculture notes in the new video that these fisheries have “been very sustainable over the last 30 years,” and that the ingredients they provide will continue to be valuable as aquaculture expands.

“Aquaculture growth has been about 8 percent per year for the last 25 years,” says Dr. Silverstein. “Today, about 50 percent of the seafood consumed by humans is coming from aquaculture, and that’s slated to continue growing. So we’re going need to produce more and more seafood through aquaculture.”

With growing global demand for marine ingredients, the aquaculture industry is also looking toward the future, adapting and innovating to make the use of fish meal and oil more efficient. While new formulas and substitute ingredients will become increasingly common, fish meal and fish oil will remain irreplaceable components of aquaculture.

“Aquaculture will, over time, be able to grow, but fish meal will still be at the base of aquaculture, and if you took fish meal away, this would have a very serious effect on the aquaculture industry in the world” says Dr. Andrew Jackson, Technical Director of IFFO. Dr. Jackson was awarded the Seafood Champion Leadership Award the at the 2015 SeaWeb Seafood Summit in New Orleans, Louisiana, in acknowledgement of his work to promote sustainability in the marine ingredient and aquaculture industries.

Dr. Jackson also notes that marine ingredients are an increasingly important component of the global food supply. According to Dr. Jackson, 15 million tons of fish are used annually to produce 5 million tons of fish meal. That 5 million tons goes to feed 35 million tons of aquaculture, and goes into the animal feed that produces around 300 million tons of food. Dr. Jackson sees this as a reasonable tradeoff, “so long as things are being done in a proper, responsible, sustainable way.”

The interviews with industry leaders and experts were conducted at the 2015 Seafood Expo North America in Boston and the 2015 SeaWeb Seafood Summit. Featured in the video are Drs. Silverstein, Rubino, Barrows, and Jackson, as well as Andrew Nagle, a member of the Seafood Sales and Purchasing team at the John Nagle Company, located in Boston, Massachusetts.

Saving Seafood is a Washington D.C.-based non-profit that conducts media and public outreach on behalf of the seafood industry.

IFFO is an international non-profit that represents and promotes the global fish meal, fish oil, and marine ingredients industry.

Omega Protein Corporation is a century old nutritional company that develops, produces and delivers healthy products throughout the world to improve the nutritional integrity of functional foods, dietary supplements and animal feeds.

View the video, “A Closer Look at Aquaculture and Marine Ingredients,” here

View a PDF of the release here

Menhaden Fishing: from the 1860s through Present Day

September 9, 2015 — It is an oily little fish only surpassed by its ugliness. But to the Native Americans and subsequently the early settlers along the eastern seaboard, it was more valuable than caviar. When the settlers came to Virginia and New England, methods of growing food were much different than from their homelands. The soil was sandy and less fertile than home which made farming difficult. The Native Americans taught the colonists how to place two small fish in each hill where seeds were planted. The decomposition of the fish added the required nutrient, and corn, introduced to the colonist by the Indians, became a staple food for settlers. In long rows, the fish were laid end to end and covered up. As they decomposed, the usually sandy loam soil became much more fertile and would support crops.

The fish was called munnawhateaug  by the Native Americans. It has been called a variety of other names in English such as bunkers, porgy, fat back, yellow tail but mostly menhaden. The fish usually does not exceed 10-12 inches in size and its main diet is plankton making it a very important part of the aquatic food chain in the waters from Maine to the Mid-Atlantic.

The menhaden schooled very close to shore. They were harvested by haul sein nets from the shore, in gill nets worked by canoes or small boats, in pound nets, or in some cases schools of fish were pressed against the shoreline and scooped up in baskets.

Quite by accident, the oil produced by rendering the fish was found to be satisfactory for use instead of whale oil. In about 1850, an old lady named Mrs. John Barlett from Blue Hill, Maine was cooking some menhaden to feed to her chickens. She noticed as the fish boiled, there was an abundance of clear oil left on top of the water. According to an 1874 statement by Eben Phillips, an oil merchant in Boston, Mrs. Barlett skimmed the oil from the kettle and brought him a sample of the oil. He told her that he would pay $11 per barrel for all she could produce. The next year she produced 13 barrels and then 100 barrels the next year and so forth. As in the case of most “discoveries” by accident, a lady cooking chicken feed was the beginning of the menhaden industry along the East Coast from Maine to the Carolinas. The oil from these small fish huddled close to shore became competitors with the ocean going New England whalers producing lamp oil and oil for other uses. The by-product of boiling the fish was collected, ground and sold as fertilizer and refined for animal feed.

Read the full story at The House & Home Magazine