Marine Mammal Oils

Abstract

Marine oils are obtained from the flesh of fatty fish, liver of lean white fish, and blubber of marine mammals. Although lipids from marine fish have been used as food and medicine, traditional uses of blubber lipids of marine mammals were mostly industrially oriented, except for Innus and Eskimos. Marine mammal oils were lubricants or “train” oils as well as fuel and used for lighting. However, recent research findings on the importance of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC PUFA) in human health have opened new channels for their value-added use in food and pharmaceutical industries. During the last three decades, it has been established that Greenland Eskimos living on their traditional diet have a lower incidence of coronary heart disease than do Danes living on a western-style diet. It has been recognized that polyunsaturated fatty acids could be useful in controlling serum triacylglycerols, but the fatty acids provided by the food industry were often of the ω6 family. Keywords: marine mammal oil; fish oil; triacylglycerols; omega-3 fatty acids; docosapentaenoic acid; eicosapentaenoic acid; docosahexaenoic acid