Oil on troubled waters?
Over the last year hopes for an increase in the availability of fishmeal and fish oil have been expressed across the industry.
This comparatively optimistic outlook follows over a year in which the Peruvian anchovy fishery has been severely affected by adverse climatic conditions, which have caused the usually cool waters off Peru’s Pacific coast to warm up to the point where the fish stocks have suffered.
Andrew Jackson, Technical Director of IFFO, the Marine Ingredient Organisation, told Fish Farming Expert that although the conditions “severely curtailed” the fishing season last year, there are now “some signs of the fish stocks recovering” and fishing in the south of the country will shortly be resumed.
However, Jackson continues, “it is still too early to know for sure” how much fish oil is likely to be available this year. Moreover, he stresses that competition for the resource is becoming more ferocious – not least due to the increased amount being consumed directly by humans.
“At one stage there was about 1.3 million tonnes of fish oil available each year,” he explains, “but this levelled off at around 1 million tonnes now that many of the oily fish, such as herring and mackerel, go towards direct human consumption.
“The recent conditions in Peru have caused the amount of fish oil available to fall further, to around 800,000 tonnes over the last two years. To make matters worse for salmon farmers, around 200,000 tonnes of this is now consumed as dietary supplements and also in pharmaceutical medicines, for example taken by those at high risk of heart attacks.”
As a result, the salmon industry will be desperately hoping that climatic conditions finally ease and Peru’s fishing season picks up as hoped, allowing the supply to bounce back to the million tonne mark.
However, in the meantime, as Jackson concedes, research into alternative sources of the crucial health-giving omega-3s EPA and DHA will continue to attract a “high level of interest” – both from the salmon farming industry and from marine ingredients bodies such as IFFO.
