NEW SEA FOOD

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 108, 10 May 1939, Page 14

NEW SEA FOOD

TESTS BY GERMANY

A new sea food may appear soon on the German market to make Germany still more independent. of foreign imports in pursuance of the Reich's fouryear economic plan. It is plankton, the minute flora and fauna of the sea, states a message from Heligoland. The State Biological Institute here sent a special ship into the North Sea recently to investigate the food possibilities of these tiny organisms. The Heligoland experimenters, according to the Food Ministry's official organ, have reported finding that animal plankton in a dried state is almost equal to the best meat. They reported it contained about 60 per cent, albumen, 20 per cent, carbohydrates, and from 7 to 12J per cent. fats. Vegetable, plankton, they said, has almost the same nutritive value as rye flour, since it contains up to 54 per cent, silicic acid, from 20 to 30 per cent, carbohydrates, 10 to 13 per cent, albumen, and 2 per cent. fats. - Cases are known, according to this authority, of shipwrecked crews having subsisted on plankton strained through handkerchiefs.

Whales, it is pointed out, and many kinds of fish feed on plankton almost exclusively. In the autumn, according to the report, plankton is at its best, equalling in composition the best kind of cattle fodder.

Natural scientists are now busy finding out ways to harvest plankton and make it a commercial proposition.