To grow value while maintaining healthy fisheries, scientists and engineers have developed ways to extract the oils, proteins and bioactive compounds hidden inside fish frames and seafood processing waste. These compounds have useful health benefits for use in dietary supplements and nutraceutical products.

Marlborough Sounds mussels

This research began in New Zealand in 1986. Since then, scientists have developed new industrial processes, extracting extremely pure oils and compounds ideal for use in protein-rich products.

Green-lipped mussels, our largest aquaculture species, yield extremely high-value oil extracts through supercritical CO₂ extraction processes developed in New Zealand. Mussel oil is worth roughly a thousand times more than raw mussels.

New Zealand company Sanford is working with scientists to understand the health benefits of marine extracts. They’ve proven Greenshell mussel powder can aid muscle recovery after exercise; now they’re looking at whether it is effective against other sources of inflammation.

And scientists working with Premium Seas New Zealand have developed a method to produce concentrated fucoidan powder from Japanese brown seaweed as a nutraceutical with immunity and inflammation battling properties.

Using their knowledge of the ocean, scientists are designing factories that use AI to analyse biological materials, such as seafood catch, and decide how best to process these to use as much of the catch as possible and maximise value. The Cyber-Marine research programme developed processing sequences that extract successive layers of value from a single raw material. Cascades were developed for Greenshell mussels, hoki and jack mackerel, then tested on tuna heads and salmon viscera.

Future cascades may extend further. Collagen from hoki skin, for example, can be processed for use in 3D tissue scaffolds or cosmeceuticals