Ship-eating sea worm could soon be sold by supermarkets as sustainable fish alternative

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A ship-eating sea worm could soon be sold by supermarkets as a sustainable alternative to different fish merchandise.

Researchers at Cambridge and Plymouth Universities are rising the slimy white mollusc with the purpose of farming it for shoppers within the UK.

Known as the shipworm, teredo worm, or tamilok within the Philippines – the place folks eat it uncooked dipped in coconut vinegar with salt and chilli – it’s totally different from many different molluscs in that it doesn’t have a shell.

Instead, utilizing two small plates on its head, the shipworm grows by burrowing its manner into wooden submerged in seawater.

Researchers David Willer, from Cambridge, and his colleague Reuben Shipway, from Plymouth, preferring the nickname the “naked clam”, consider the creatures will present a sustainable alternative to the “big five”. Cod, haddock, salmon, tuna and prawns make up 80 per cent of the seafood eaten within the nation, but they’re fished by means of the dangerous and infrequently unsustainable methodology of trawling.

The hope is the shipworm would supply folks with the advantages of a fish-rich eating regimen, such as a discount within the threat of strokes or neurodegenerative ailments, however in a extra sustainable manner. The NHS suggests people nonetheless solely eat simply over half of the beneficial two weekly parts of fish.

Mr Willer instructed The Times: “The great thing about your naked clam is that it feeds on wood. The key to its success is the symbiotic bacteria and fungi in its gut, which convert the wood into a variety of compounds including protein, a lot of vitamin B12 and essential micronutrients. Compared with something like tuna, you’ve got no wild fishing impact.”

While it often feeds on wooden, the shipworm also can filter meals pellets, which may be used to raise flavour or odor. Its style has been in comparison with oysters, however the kind of wooden in touch with the mollusc may cause this to fluctuate.

Willer stated: “In the Philippines they’re typically battered like calamari or in a marinated stew. If you’re going to do them as a mass-market consumer product, we’re thinking they’ll be mashed up like in fish fingers.”

The scientists constructed the world’s first shipworm aquaculture in Plymouth final yr – a picket, brick-sized matrix by which the clams develop – with the hope the cultivation method could be rolled out on land throughout the UK. Once they obtain patents for his or her invention, the two-year scale-up plan is ready to start from May, involving farming off the Devon coast.

Shipworms are recognized for boring into French and UK ships within the Channel – and even for inflicting bother for Christopher Columbus when he was stranded within the Caribbean. However, the scientists found the creatures are wealthy in vitamins, such as vitamin B12, and require merely wooden and water to develop, with the potential of feeding them recycled wooden chips to once more cut back carbon affect.

Willer stated: “Naked clams don’t put much energy into growing shells, and they grow much faster than mussels and oysters, which can take two years to reach a harvestable size.”

There is “definitely reason to be hopeful” about shipworms, stated Charlotte Coombes, who’s of the Marine Conservation Society, which produces the Good Fish Guide that gives alternate options to the massive 5.

She stated: “It’s this different way of thinking about our food systems that we really do need, because we can’t just keep going on as we are, when 97 per cent of global fish stocks are either fully fished or overfished. But it all depends on what it looks like when it’s scaled up.”

Willer added: “It might sound a bit ridiculous, but readers may want to be reminded about Quorn. The fungus that becomes Quorn itself looks terrible, I would never want to eat it, but they managed to convert it into a food product. There is potential that this could go the same way.”