Bioresources for Seafood and Their Utilization and Processing in Japan: Current Status and Future Perspectives

Fish muscle is one of the typical animal protein sources and its high nutritional value is comparable with those of other animal protein sources such as livestock meat and milk. Recently, additional benefits of dietary fish proteins have been demonstrated such as improvement of lipid metabolism, antihypertension, stimulation of fibrinolysis, and antiobesity. Fish muscle is not only consumed as raw but also processed to various types of food including surimi-based, heated gel products such as kamaboko and imitation crab meat which are now distributed to various countries in the world. Fish and their processed food are attracting attention in the world as healthy foods, since these contain unfavorable lipids such as saturated and omega-6 fatty acids at low levels in contrast to those of livestock animal meat in addition to above-mentioned benefits of fish proteins. However, some fish are supplied to produce fishmeal due to a low market price and even discarded on board because the cost to bring them back to the fishing port is over the market price. If such fish are able to be processed to more valuable products such as surimi-based products, it will greatly contribute to the effective and sustainable utilization of marine bioresources.