2016-2017

News Release

REF NO.: 108

SUBJECT: Valuable trash: A fisherman's trash is this scientist's treasure

DATE: July 12, 2017

A lot of effort and expense goes into harvesting fish, but on average, only about 30-60 per cent of a fish is sold to consumers and ultimately used.

The rest is discarded in landfills or disposed of in the water from which it came.

Dr. Kelly Hawboldt, a researcher with the Ocean Frontier Institute and a professor in the Department of Process Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, at Memorial University, doesn’t like waste.

Or rather, she doesn’t like to see fish wasted.

Dr. Hawboldt believes that by using science, we can extract value from fish waste by using it to create products consumers will not only demand, but will pay a premium for. This in turn would lead to new jobs and economic growth.

And because she’s a big proponent of sustainable business practices, her research is engaged in determining how new products made from fish by products can also reduce our environmental footprint.
 
About the Ocean Frontier Institute (OFI)
OFI is a partnership between Dalhousie University, Memorial University of Newfoundland and the University of Prince Edward Island. It is a collaborative research initiative to harness the vast potential of the world’s ocean. An international hub for ocean science, OFI brings together researchers and institutes from across the globe to understand our changing ocean and create safe, sustainable solutions for development. Other partners include scientists from three of the Government of Canada’s federal laboratories, Royal Canadian Navy, National Film Board of Canada, Nova Scotia Community College, provincial governments of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador and various private sector businesses and industry. International research institutes involved in OFI are Alfred Wegener Institute (Germany), Christian-Albrechts-Universitat zu Kiel (Germany), GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research (Germany), Institute of Marine Research (Norway), LabexMER (France), Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University (New York), Marine Institute, Galway (Ireland) and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (Massachusetts). Core funding is provided by the Canada First Research Excellence Fund.

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