FISH PROCESSING & PRESERVATION

Dr.J.P.Srivastava
Assistant Professor

Department of Zoology
D.B.S.College, Kanpur
CSJM UNIVERTY
 FISH PROCESSING
INTRODUCTION
• Fish preservation is a very important aspect of the fisheries.
• Normally the fish farms or other fish capturing sites are
located far off from the market place and there is chance of
fish decomposition and the uncertainties of their sale in
market.
• When the fishes are caught in numbers, greater than the
amount of consumption, their preservation becomes a
necessity for their future use.
• Preservation and processing, therefore become a very
important part of commercial fisheries.
• It is done in such a manner that the fishes remain fresh for
a long time, with a minimum loss of flavour, taste, odour,
nutritive value and the digestibility of their flesh.
 FISH PROCESSING

Based on time duration

Preservation for short duration Preservation for long time

Cleaning

Chilling Gutting

Conservation and storage

Freezing Deep freezing
Freeze-drying
Drying

Salting

Smoking
Canning
 Preservation for short duration

Chilling
• This is obtained by covering the fish
with layers of ice. However, ice
alone is not effective for long
preservation, because melting
water brings about a sort of
leaching of valuable flesh contents
which are responsible for the Alternate layers of fish and ice are
kept in closed vessels to maintain
flavour.
the temperature at 0°C. Sometimes
• But ice is effective for short term for the preservation of large-sized
preservation such as is needed to fishes, the ice pieces or cubes are
transport landed fish to nearby also kept in the abdominal cavity of
gutted fishes. This is a cheaper and
markets or to canning factories, etc. more convenient method of fish
• Here autolytic enzymatic activities preservation and is widely used for
are checked by lowering the fish transport from one place to
another for a short distance.
 BOX

Fishes

Ice

CHILLING PRESERVATION FOR SHORT TIME

 PRESERVATION FOR LONG TIME
When the preservation is required for a long period of time, the fishes are passed
through the cleaning, gutting and conservation and storage.
Cleaning:
During cleaning, the caught first are fish washed thoroughly in cold, clean water to
remove bacteria, slime, blood, faeces, and mud, etc. from the body surface of
the fish. It is being done under proper sanitary conditions.
Gutting:
After cleaning, the fishes are cut along their mid ventral side, and their visceral
organs are removed. By removing viscera, the bacteria in the gastro intestinal tract
and enzymes of visceral organs are removed along with it to prevent bacterial
decomposition and enzymic autolysis respectively.
Conservation and storage:
Conservation is necessary to keep the dead fish in fresh condition for quite a long
time. This is achieved by employing any one of the methods like
FREEZING,
DRYING,
SALTING,
SMOKING AND
CANNING.
 FREEZING
FREEZING METHODS ARE TWO TYPE :
1. Deep freezing:
2. Freeze-drying:
Deep freezing: WASH
This method of fish preservation is used for large
periods of preservation.
It is a more effective but costly process. DECAPITATION
Before freezing, fishes are washed properly and
kept at a temperature of -18°C for a longer period.
GUTTED
For this process, only the fresh fish in good
condition are deep-frozen.
Before keeping the fish in this process the heads
of large fishes are removed and they are also WASH
gutted and washed.
This process is without spoilage and fish can be
kept for a longer period. FREZZ AT -180C
Freeze-drying :
This process is lengthy as well as expensive and used for the preservation
of only good quality fish.
This process involves two steps,
 first freezing of the fish
 second step is drying of fish by sublimation.
In this technique, the fish is frozen at -20°C by keeping them in a freezing
chamber.
As soon as freezing is over, the frozen fishes are kept in trays and are
transferred to the cabin containing horizontal heating plates for drying in a
vacuum.
In this technique, ice is changed into water vapour without melting.
The fishes are well dried due to hot plates and then they are placed in air-
conditioned chamber.
By this process, the color and nutritive substances are completely
preserved.
 Salting:
• Salting is a very old and common practice used in fish preservation
in India and other parts of the world.
• Salting is nothing but the partial dehydration of fishes by osmosis
with sodium chloride.
• Due to intense salting, microbes are killed and diastasis is stopped.
• In this process before salting, the heads of the fishes are removed,
gutted and washed, and then salted as soon as possible.
• There are different methods of salting such as
1. Dry salting,
2. Cold salting,
3. Light, or
4. Strong salting
5. Mixed Salting
6. Pit Curing
1. DRY SALTING:
• In this method, alternate layers of fish and salt are placed. This is called
dry salting.
2. WET SALTING OR BRINE:
• In this process, the fishes are dipped in salty water called brine. The brine
or saltwater is used in two different concentrations.
• In light brine, the salt concentration is 16% and strong brine is used
containing 25% salt.
• After this saltwater treatment, the fishes are dipped in salt.
3. COLD SALTING:
• In this process, salt and crushed ice are spread on the fish.
• This process is carried out in a cold room only where the temperature is
maintained at 2 or 3°C.
• This is also called light cold salting.
4. STRONG SALTING :
• A strong salting process is performed at normal room temperature.
• Salting is a very common practice adopted by fishermen near seashores.
• The small-sized fishes are sun-dried and preserved for a longer period.
5. Mixed salting
• In this process, simultaneous use of salt and brine is
followed.
• The salting process is continued till the concentration of
salt in the surrounding medium equalizes with the
concentration of salt in the fish tissue.
• The salting process may affect the shape, structure and
the mechanical features of muscle tissue.
6. Pit curing
• It is another process employed in south and south east
of our country.
• In this process the fish treated with salt are buried in
pits lined with leaves.
• After 2-3 days they are removed and marketed directly.
 SALTING

SALTING
 Drying
• Drying involves dehydration i.e. the removal of moisture contents of fish, so that the
bacterial decomposition or enzymic autolysis does not occur.
• When moisture contents reduce up to 10%, the fishes are not spoiled provided they are
stored in dry conditions.
• Fish drying is achieved either naturally or by artificial means.
Natural drying
• In natural drying the fishes after being caught are washed and dried in the sunshine.
• They are suspended or laid out flat on the open ground.
• The process, however, has a number of disadvantages.
• It is slow and results in much loss, through putrefaction.
• It can be carried out only in dry, well aerated climate receiving sunshine which is not
too hot.
• It, thus depends upon the environmental factors and availability of space.
• Lastly only the thin fishes can be preserved by this method, because the fat fishes
have much flesh allowing bacterial decomposition to continue in deeper parts of their
body.
• An additional disadvantage is that dried fishes require a long soaking period to
restore water and that the sun dried fishes are not usually relished.
• The larger fishes are cut into pieces for easy drying.
• However, this method is not perfect for longer preservation
• Sun curing:
• It is a little bit advanced method over simple sun drying in
which the body of fish is opened from the ventral side and
viscera and gills are removed. Then the fish is washed and
salted in the ratio of 1: 3 to 1: 8 (salt: fish) which is related to
the size of the fish.
• Mona curing:
• It is similar to sun curing but the difference is that no incision
is made in the body of the fish to remove the intestine and
gills.
• These organs are directly removed from the mouth.
• Further, such eviscerated fishes are cleaned, salted, and
dried as earlier.
• Wet curing:
• It is also like sun curing with the only difference in the packing
of salted fish as such. This method is used only for fatty fish.
 Smoking
• The process in which fishes are preserved by the treatment of wood smoke
is called smoking.
• This permits the preparation of delicate specialties.
• While using this method the temperature of the smoke and its rate of
circulation should be controlled.
• Smoking is again of two types;
1. Hot smoking and
2. Cold smoking.
For cold smoking,
• fishes are dried, salted, exposed to the smokeless fire (38°C), and then
processed for real smoke at 28°C.
For the hot smoking process,
• fresh fish is used and fish are subjected at 130°C on strong fire which is
followed by smoking at 40°C.
• Industrial smoking is done in galleries with a smoking installation and a
system for the proper circulation of smokes.
• This method was used to preserve the fish in World War II but it is not
recommended in the present-day fish industries.
 Canning:
• Canning is the expensive process of fish preservation and
hence it is not commonly used.
• However, it is widely used in advanced countries like
America, France, Japan, and Spain.
• This is a lengthy, complicated but very advanced process
of preservation.
• In this process, the best quality fishes are selected and
their heads and viscera are removed.
• Then these eviscerated fishes are treated with brine
(saltwater), washed, dried, and cooked in olive oil.
• This process is used to remove excess water for 2 to 5
minutes.
• Then the cooked fishes are packed in olive oil in tins and
sealed and sent to markets
 DEMERITS OF FISH PRESERVATION
Although the preservation and processing constitute a very important aspect of the
fish industry, it has certain draw backs;
1. Chilling brings about denaturation of flesh. This is because of ice crystals formed
during chilling and causing mechanical damage to the muscles. Cell walls burst,
structure gets deformed and the flesh loses much of flavour and taste. The flesh
also becomes dehydrated and losses texture
2. If proper hygienic measures are not taken during the processes like washing,
guttation and evisceration, etc. more harm would be done to the preserved
material, owing to increase in the bacteria population.
3. Incomplete or poor preservation leads to decarboxylation of histidine of fish flesh
into histamine. The latter some other related substances, collectively called saurine,
are common causes of food poisoning.
4. Drying reduces weight, nutritive value and the digestibility of the flesh.
5. Excess salting allows growth of salt tolerant bacteria, causing pink eye spoilage
of fish flesh.
6. Salting combined with smoking results in loss of protein, about 1 to 5 % due to
salting and 8 to 30 % due to smoking.
7. Smoking also accelerates rancidity of fat and so reduces digestibility of fat
products.
8. Canning leads to much loss of vitamin B1, panthotenic acid, vitamin-C and
pteroxylglutamic acid .