Saving Seafood

Octopuses Get Strangely Cuddly On The Mood Drug Ecstasy

September 21, 2018 — The psychoactive drug known as ecstasy can make people feel extra loving toward others, and a study published Thursday suggests it has the same effect on octopuses.

Octopuses are almost entirely antisocial, except when they’re mating, and scientists who study them have to house them separately so they don’t kill or eat each other. However, octopuses given the drug known as MDMA (or ecstasy, E, Molly or a number of other slang terms) wanted to spend more time close to other octopuses and even hugged them.

“I was absolutely shocked that it had this effect,” says Judit Pungor, a neuroscientist at the University of Oregon who studies octopuses but wasn’t part of the research team.

The eight-legged invertebrates are separated from humans by more than 500 million years of evolution, Pungor says. Octopuses’ closest relatives are creatures like snails and slugs, and their brains have a host of strange structures that evolved on a completely different trajectory from the human path.

“They have this huge complex brain that they’ve built, that has absolutely no business acting like ours does — but here they show that it does,” says Pungor. “The fact that they induced this very sort of gentle, cuddly behavior is really pretty fascinating.”

The idea to test the drug’s effect in octopuses came from Gul Dolen, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University.

Read the full story at NPR

Public health could – and should – play bigger role in US fisheries policy

June 26, 2017 — U.S. dietary guidelines call for Americans to eat more fish. But fishery managers don’t usually manage stocks with this goal in mind, according to a recent study.

Fisheries policy is essentially part of the nation’s food policy, which affects public health. So, fishery managers, whether they mean to or not, affect the availability, access and distribution of healthy seafood for Americans nationwide.

Despite this intrinsic link, fishery managers don’t usually take public health into account, the researchers said.

The primary authors of the study published in June were Dave Love, an associate scientist at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for a Livable Future, and Patricia Pinto da Silva, a social scientist at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“Fisheries managers should consider how management decisions affect markets, access and use of seafood,” the researchers told SeafoodSource in an email.

The Magnuson-Stevens Act, which is the main fisheries management law in the U.S., requires fisheries to be managed to produce the greatest benefits to the nation in terms of food production, within environmental constraints.

“However, while this is a key component of the [law], fisheries are generally not managed with food production in mind,” the researchers said.

Current fisheries management doesn’t take into account what the fish is used for once it’s caught, or where it goes. This means that it’s impossible to know if the country is meeting optimum yield, the researchers said.

Part of this disconnect comes from the fact that fisheries policymakers and public health officials are literally in different federal departments: Commerce for fisheries and Health and Human Services for public health. Federal agencies do cooperate on seafood inspection.

The researchers recommend fostering better collaboration between fisheries and health agencies.

“The public health and medical community needs to seek out information from the fisheries community about the ecological health of a resource before they make recommendations about what seafood consumers should eat,” they said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

JACK WHITACRE: When a fish is more than a fillet

FREEPORT, Maine — The expression “Waste not, want not” originated in America. By surveying the best seafood utilization practices around the world, Maine could lead the United States in reviving thrift and increasing profits and sustainability.

Maine lobster has become synonymous with value. But what if there were additional profits waiting to be unlocked in what we currently toss out?

Surprisingly, chitin, a natural polymer found in lobster shells, can be harvested and amassed for high-value agricultural, industrial and medical applications. Chitin from crustacean shells is just one example of 100 percent seafood utilization.

Just like Native Americans used every part of the buffalo, there are now opportunities to fully use seafood and push upward on the value chain. Investing time and resources in the utilization movement could generate new jobs, products and startups in Maine and beyond.

The Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins University estimates that the United States wasted 4.6 million metric tons of edible and inedible seafood from 2009 to 2013. During this same period, the center calculated, at least 1.8 trillion milligrams of fish oil was wasted.

With raw fish oil selling for $9 a pound and fish oil capsules selling for $370 a pound, the raw oil wasted in the United States represents millions of dollars in potential value if worked up to pharmaceutical quality. This is just one example of an opportunity for economic and environmental improvement.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

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