Bivalves: ‘The world’s their fish finger’
TAAI member David Willer and Dr David Aldridge are on a mission to work out how to look after our planet and people’s health at the same time. As zoologists in the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute, they want to demonstrate that bivalve shellfish – oysters, scallops, mussels and clams – can be a source of affordable, sustainable and nutritious food.
“In the developed world, over two billion people eat too many calories but not enough nutrients to stay healthy,” says David Willer, “and a billion people in the developing world don’t have access to enough food. We believe bivalves are the answer.”
The challenge for the researchers is to increase the productivity of bivalve farming, while at the same time raising safety standards. They have developed a specially formulated diet for the shellfish that enables farmers to take better control of their hatcheries. “We call it a ‘microencapsulated BioBullet’,” says David Aldridge. “It contains algae, just like the algae being used in the hatcheries now, except ours is grown on a commercial scale and then powdered down and sterilized to avoid diseases.”
Photo by Globefish, FAO
This is about providing people with food that is environmentally sustainable but also nutrient dense.. “We know that meat and fish have a greater environmental impact than plant-based foods. But the environmental footprint of bivalve aquaculture is even lower than many arable crops in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, land and freshwater use”.Climate change is an impending pressure changes to people’s diets will be needed. Microencapsulated diets could be the start of a revolution.
David Willer is particularly interested in sustainable bivalve farming opportunities along the west coasts of India, and Africa.
There is just one last challenge to overcome. Bivalves are not actually a food many people tend to like to eat. “We can increase the production of a very sustainable food, but if no-one eats it, it’s pointless.” They are looking at novel ways to make bivalves more palatable. One idea is to swap out fish – which is often sourced unsustainably – for processed clam meat in a new form of ‘bivalve fish fingers‘. Read the story on the university website.
[Thanks to member David Willer and to author Jaqueline Garget, erstwhile coordinator of TAAI member Cambridge GFS]
