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

 

Fish oil pills during pregnancy may lead to stronger, healthier children

September 5, 2018 — Taking fish oil supplements during pregnancy might translate into healthier growth in children during their first six years of life, a new study suggests.

“This study highlights the fact that in utero exposure can have a profound effect on the fetus that lasts through childhood,” said Dr. Jennifer Wu, an obstetrician-gynecologist from Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

“For the past decade, the importance of fish oil and the omega-3 fatty acids have been stressed to patients,” explained Wu, who was not involved in the study.

“The use of fish oil in the latter part of the pregnancy has an impact on bone and muscle mass. Though these children are larger, they do not have increased rates of obesity,” Wu added.

In the study, the researchers followed 736 pregnant women in Denmark who took either fish oil or olive oil supplements daily from week 24 of their pregnancy until one week after they gave birth.

Read the full story at United Press International

 

For Infants With Rare And Scary Disorder, FDA Approval Of Fish Oil Could Be Life Saving

August 7, 2018 — The following is excerpted from a story published by WGBH:

The FDA approved a drug last month that provides nutrition to children born with a scary condition. That approval is the result of 16 years of work by doctors and researchers at Children’s Hospital in Boston.

When Gib Brogan’s daughter Ellie was born, he says at first everything seemed perfect. But things changed quickly.

“Soon after she was born, early, early one morning, she got very ill. She started vomiting dark green,” Brogan said.

Ellie was rushed to the neonatal ICU, where doctors quickly realized something was very wrong.

“They told us she had short bowel syndrome. She was missing 90 percent of her small intestine and 30 percent of her large intestine,” Brogan said.

The NIH says short bowel syndrome affects about three out of every million people. Ellie had surgery to connect her intestines, but there wasn’t enough there to really work right.

“On that first day the surgeon told us that she can be fed by I.V., but there is a bit of a race that comes when you feed an infant through an I.V.,” Brogan said.

That race is to get them eating regularly as soon as possible. Because while you can feed newborns through an I.V, over an extended period of time, the fat that they’re given, which comes from soybean oil, can damage their livers, meaning they’ll likely need a transplant.

By the time Ellie was transferred to Boston Children’s Hospital, at just a few weeks old, she already had the yellowed skin and eyes of jaundice — a sign of liver damage.

“And one day we were sitting at Children’s and a doctor knocked on the door and he came in and said, ‘My name is Dr. Mark Puder. I have something I’d like to talk to you about,'” Brogan remembered.

“And I approached the family,” Puder said, “because we had developed something in the laboratory that we’d already given to some patients and had reversed that liver injury.”

“He sat down and he told us that there were a little over 20 kids that they tried using fish oil with,” Brogan said, “and that in that limited number of kids they had seen great things with their livers — that the damage had not progressed, and in some cases it had cleared up.”

The Brogans agreed to be part of the trial. And it worked.

Read and listen to the full story at WGBH

Balancing the Needs of People and Marine Ecosystems: Saving Seafood Looks at Aquaculture Sustainability

June 12, 2018 — WASHINGTON — Leading aquaculture experts discuss what sustainability looks like in farmed fishing and how we achieve it in the latest episode of Saving Seafood’s video series, Aquaculture Today. 

“One thing that’s true is the aquaculture industry is here to stay, has a very bright and important future for food security on the planet,” says Corey Peet, Managing Director of the Asian Seafood Improvement Collaborative. “But that has to be grounded in an objective view of how do we develop it sustainably.”

According to the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership’s 2017 overview of reduction fisheries – fisheries used for the production of fishmeal and fish oil – just over 83 percent of global catch from reduction fisheries comes from stocks that are reasonably well managed or better. Only an estimated 17 percent of reduction catch comes from poorly managed fisheries.

“20 years ago we were obsessed by this issue of fishmeal sustainability and inputs,” says Dan Lee, Standards Coordinator for the Global Aquaculture Alliance’s Best Aquaculture Practices Program. “We’ve pretty much solved that and it’s been through economic forces largely.”

According to Manuel Barange, Director of Fisheries and Aquaculture at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the goal of sustainability should not be maintaining the status quo, but ensuring that aquaculture will be able to feed the world’s growing population while protecting marine ecosystems.

“Sustainability means to understand the needs of the people for this generation and in future generations, and therefore how to protect the marine environment and the freshwater environment so that they keep producing,” says Mr. Barange.

Experts also stressed the importance of more data to help fisheries managers make informed decisions about aquaculture, as well as the need for continued industry involvement.

“Fishery management is better the more data we can get, the more accurate modeling that we can get,” says Neil Auchterlonie, Technical Director at IFFO.

“Doing good science, having good industry participation, and recognizing that when there are challenging issues, that collaboration within the industry is probably one of the best ways to solve them,” says Tim Fitzgerald, Director of the Environmental Defense Fund’s Impact Division.

The video is the fourth and final in a series, Aquaculture Today, in which Saving Seafood interviews leading aquaculture experts about advances in farmed fishing and what the industry will look like in the future. Previous episodes of Aquaculture Today covered its role in feeding the world, its efficiency, and the nutritional benefits of omega-3 fatty acids.

Interviews for Aquaculture Today were conducted by Saving Seafood at the 2017 SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Seattle, Washington.

 

Fish Oil May Protect the Youngest Hearts

June 8, 2018 — Omega-3 fatty acids — good fats found in fish — can boost the heart health of adults, but a new study suggests that babies might also stand to benefit from them.

In the study from Australia, infants were given a daily fish oil supplement or a placebo from birth to 6 months. When they were 5 years old, researchers found that the children who had been given fish oil had smaller waists than the youngsters who were given a placebo. A larger waist circumference is a known risk factor for heart disease, according to the American Heart Association.

The researchers also found that boys given fish oil supplements in infancy had less circulating insulin in their bodies and less resistance to insulin when they were 5, though the study could only show an association between the two. Insulin is a hormone that carries sugars from the foods you eat into your cells to be used as fuel. Insulin resistance and higher levels of insulin play a role in the development of type 2 diabetes.

“It seems that using fish oil could help decrease waist circumference, which by itself, is a major cardiometabolic risk factor. But we can’t say for sure yet whether this will last,” said pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Siham Accacha. She was not involved in the study, but reviewed its findings.

“I’m also not sure why the insulin findings were only in boys. At age 5, there are no pubertal hormones, but obviously there was something there,” said Accacha, director of the pediatric diabetes program at NYU Winthrop Hospital in Mineola, N.Y.

Read the full story at U.S. News

Breakthrough in omega-3 understanding could revolutionize feed industry

May 31, 2018 — A new study, led by the University of Stirling in Scotland, has led to a major discovery about the way in which omega-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids are produced in the ocean.

According to lead scientist Oscar Monroig from the university’s Institute of Aquaculture, the breakthrough challenges the generally held principle that marine microbes, such as microalgae and bacteria, are responsible for virtually all primary production of omega-3 fatty acids, which are essential for human health, and have been proven to be particularly useful in combating and preventing cardiovascular and inflammatory diseases.

Instead, an international team of scientists from the United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain, Japan, and Australia found that omega-3s can be created by many marine invertebrates.

“Our study provides a paradigm shift in understanding, as it demonstrates that a large variety of invertebrate animals, including corals, rotifers, molluscs, polychaetes and crustaceans, possess enzymes called ‘desaturases’ of a type that enable them to produce omega-3, an ability thought previously to exist almost exclusively in marine microbes,” Monroig said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Kids who eat fish are smarter, sleep better

December 27, 2017 — Eating fish is good for kids’ zzz’s and IQ’s.

A new study from the University of Pennsylvania found that children who eat fish at least once a week boosted their intelligence test scores and the quality of their sleep. The research, published in the journal Scientific Reports, adds to earlier investigations into the relationship between omega-3s — fatty acids found in many types of fish — and improved smarts, and omega-3s and better shuteye.

But they’ve never all been connected before, according to Penn researchers who focused on omega-3s coming from food, not supplements.

“This area of research is not well-developed. It’s emerging,” said Jianghong Liu, lead author on the paper and an associate professor of nursing and public health, in a university release.

Findings are based on a group of 541 9- to 11-year-old boys and girls in China. Subjects reported how often they had consumed fish in the past month. Options ranged often (at least once per week), to occasionally (2-3 times per month), to seldom or never (less than 2 times per month).

Read the full story at the New York Daily News

 

Sam’s Club Awarded Ocean Champion Award for Certified Sustainable Omega 3 Supplements

Photo Caption: Accepting the award on behalf of Jill Turner-Mitchael is David Badeen, Vice President HealthCare for Sam’s Club. Shown Left to Right – Sam’s Club President and Chief Executive Officer, John Furner; Sam’s Club Executive Vice President and Chief Merchandising Officer, Ashley Buchanan; Sam’s Club VP Health Care, David Badeen; Marine Stewardship Council U.S. Program Director, Eric Critchlow.

October 20, 2017 — The following was released by the Marine Stewardship Council:

The Marine Stewardship Council today awarded Sam’s Club and the Health and Wellness Team the US Ocean Champion award for their dedication to providing certified sustainable supplements to their customers. Under the leadership of Jill Turner-Mitchael, Senior Vice President of Consumables and Health & Wellness, 100% of Sam’s Club private label Member’s Mark fish and krill oil supplement products are traceable to a MSC-certified sustainable fishery.

“I am honored to be presenting Jill and her team with this award on behalf of the Marine Stewardship Council,” said Eric Critchlow, MSC Program Director, USA. “Jill’s leadership in sourcing certified sustainable supplements and allowing the consumer to choose between certified and non-certified is bold and, most importantly, demonstrates to consumers that they can make healthy choices for themselves and the ocean.”

By educating consumers about the importance of sustainably sourced products at point-of-purchase, Sam’s Club is driving measurable change of empowering millions of Americans to choose supplements that support healthy oceans and thriving communities.

“At Sam’s Club we know our members care about having access to quality products at a great value that are healthy choices for themselves as well as the environment,” said Jill Turner-Mitchael, Senior Vice President Consumables and Health & Wellness. “Our team works very closely with our suppliers to source the best product from the best merchants and think this is a great example of how everyone wins when we do just that.”

Only seafood products that carry the blue MSC ecolabel can be traced back through the supply chain to sustainable fisheries, ensuring complete traceability to a sustainable source. To achieve MSC certification, fisheries must meet 28 performance indicators for sustainability across three principles: sustainable fish stocks, minimizing environmental impacts, and effective management. The most common MSC certified sources of Omega-3s include cod, hake, hoki, krill, pollock, salmon and sardine.

Covering more than 70% of the planet’s surface, oceans supply the oxygen we breathe and are vital to human health and well-being. As a leader in the sustainable supplements sector, Sam’s Club is contributing to the long-term sustainability of ocean environments.

15 Health Benefits of Eating Fish, According to Science

September 1, 2017 — Scientists consider fish as one of the most nutritious foods on the planet. Health experts recommend that individuals include fish into their diets as regularly as possible. This is because fish is packed with protein, vitamin D, important minerals such as selenium and iodine, as well as omega-3 fatty acids.

In fact, scientists and health experts maintain that fish is the number one source of the omega-3 fatty acids. In addition, scientific research shows that fish is one of the best dietary sources of vitamin D (1). Thus, consumption of fish can markedly improve rates of vitamin D deficiency, as well as ensure that people are getting enough omega-3 into their bodies.

This article will look at 15 scientifically proven health benefits of consuming fish. In addition, the article will present five delicious and healthy fish recipes that readers can make for themselves, their families, and friends.

1. Fish supports the health of bones and teeth

Fish is one of the best sources of vitamin D, and studies have shown that a deficiency in this nutrient results in low mineral density in the bones, as well as osteopenia, and osteoporosis (2).

Read the full list at Jen Reviews

Fatty acids lower your risk of heart disease. Without fish, you’re missing out.

August 17, 2017 — Are you getting enough omega-3s? These vital fats are beneficial for heart, brain and eye health, but it’s not just the amount that matters. The type of omega-3s in your diet could determine the health benefits you’re getting — especially if you don’t eat fish.

Long-chain omega-3 fatty acids called EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) are found in marine sources such as fatty fish and fish oils. Another type of omega-3s is ALA (alpha-linolenic acid), which is found in plant sources such as flax seeds, canola, chia and walnuts.

Most Americans aren’t getting enough EPA and DHA. That’s of concern because there is strong evidence that these omega-3s reduce triglyceride levels to help lower the risk for heart disease or heart attack. There is some evidence that these healthy fats may also reduce blood pressure and improve blood vessel function. And those are just some of the heart-health benefits. The evidence for these benefits in ALA isn’t as strong.

Penny Kris-Etherton, distinguished professor of nutrition at Pennsylvania State University, points out that, “We really haven’t seen evidence for benefits of plant omega-3s on cognition or in preventing stroke.”

Bruce Holub, professor at The University of Guelph adds, “EPA and DHA are shown to be quite effective at lowering triglyceride levels in the blood, while equal amounts of ALA had no effect.”

Getting enough DHA is especially important for pregnant women because it’s essential for healthy development of a baby’s brain and eyes.

Read the full story at the Washington Post