Accelerated Fish Sauce Fermentation

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This proposal is for collaboration with the industrial partner (Neptune Canada) to develop a cost-effective process for making superior grade fish sauce from underutilized fish species, and create opportunities to grow the company. The company's administrative office is in Longueuil, QC, and its operating base during the fishing season is in Sackville, NS. It engages in fishing and export of juvenile eels from Canada's East Coast to Asia. It employs 2 full-time and 15 seasonal fishers (ca 3 months/yr). The company is aware from its operations that harvesting of economically important fish species co-produces abundant underutilized species such as capelin, gaspereaux and squid that are currently put to low value uses (e.g., bait, feed, fertilizer). The company is also aware of keen local interest for made-in Canada fish sauce versus the imported types from Asian countries for reasons pertaining to hygiene and safety. In this regard, the company has identified a potential fish processing plant in Nova Scotia as source of the raw material and for final product exploitation, but needs product samples from this project to verify consumer acceptability and market potential. Thus, this collaborative project seeks to add value to capelin via fermentation into fish sauce for the North American market using unutilized enzyme-rich squid viscera. Fish sauce is an important component of Southeast Asian cuisine. It is commonly used for producing savory products such as sauces, soups, marinades or as salt substitute. Properly produced fish sauce has high nutrient retention, does not require refrigeration, and is free from problems with pathogenic microorganisms. Fermentation also creates little waste. The North American fish sauce market is currently expanding due to swelling immigrant population from Southeast Asia. The objectives of this study are to develop a cost-effective enzyme-assisted fermentation process to produce high quality fish sauce, via combinations of enzyme-rich squid viscera, temperature, capelin fish and salt. The successful implementation of this project would provide novel technologies to enable the partner to grow the company, and follow up collaborations by the project team through other NSERC partnership programs.