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There is broad consensus that fish oil will become a limiting factor in aquaculture development in the near future. Estimates indicate that 60-70% of global fish oil supplies are used in aquaculture. An extreme estimate points out that at the rate aquaculture is growing, the industry will need all of the world’s fish oil by the end of this decade. It is time for us to seriously look at solutions for this impending crisis.

Compared to fishmeal replacement research, fish oil replacement research is relatively recent. There are two reasons for the lag. First, the level of oil use in aqua feeds was relatively low for many years. Salmonid feeds used to contain 12-15% total fat ten years ago. Seabass and seabream feeds were formulated with 10-12% fat levels just a few years ago. The levels of fat in the feeds of these carnivorous fish have nearly doubled now. Second, the primary candidates for fish oil replacement, vegetable oils, were more expensive than fish oil. Increase in fish oil price and increasing supplies of vegetable oils are leading to price parity and even advantageous vegetable oil prices. These factors along with the very likely shortfall in supply in the future are propelling the fish oil replacement R&D.

Providing a broad overview of fish oil replacement research in this issue, Dr. Kaushik, advocates the use of fish oil only to meet the essential fatty acid requirements of the fish and use of other oils as the major energy source for improved protein efficiency. Dr. Ng presents the case of palm oil as a sustainable fish oil substitute and argues that the advantages of the oil such as its high content of antioxidants, greater stability and relatively low levels of linoleic acid overweigh its few disadvantages. Mr. Wright points out the possibility of oils recovered from seafood processing waste could at least partially offset the gap in fish oil supply. We have also presented a list of recently published papers on fish oil replacement.

Since the issue is heavily laden with articles on fats and oils, we have an article from Dr. Woolford on antioxidants. For those of you who would like to understand fish energetics, there is a great article from Dr. Lupatsch on gilthead seabream. The article demonstrates how fundamental understanding of protein and energy requirements can lead to accurate feed design and development of feeding programs. Finally, there is an article on Brazil – one of the biggest growing aqua feed markets in the world. The authors, Ms. Vanice Waldige and Alexsandra Caseiro, both feed industry insiders, point out that the industry is poised for further growth. A good news for the feed manufacturers as well as feed industry suppliers!

I hope that you will like this first issue. Like Eddy, I am also interested in hearing from you. Let me know your feedback on this issue and suggestions on what we can do to improve it to meet your information requirements in the future.

Victor Suresh
victor@feedware.com