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Calamari, the popular appetizer in restaurants worldwide, has fans even among those who don’t particularly care for seafood.
But what you see on your plate is less than half of the creature that gave up its skin to be deep fried and then mated with garnishes of various sorts. The other half, more often than not, is thrown away, creating a massive waste problem especially in places where thousands of pounds of squid are processed each day.
But that waste, coupled with the increasing effort to replace petroleum-based fertilizers with organic ones, is giving URI researchers and at least one commercial venture an opportunity to develop a new win-win product that will turn a waste product into a useful one.
And if URI’s “squid fertilizer team” has success, the day is not far away when you can go down to a garden center and buy a bottle or bag of scented squid fertilizer without the risk of making you Air Pollution Enemy # 1 in your neighborhood.
The whole project has its origins in a $159,174 Sea Grant program entitled “Solving a squid processing waste disposal problem through bioconversion into organic fertilizer.”
The processing of squid for human consumption usually results in 50 percent waste in byproduct says Dr. Chong Lee, a professor in Nutrition and Food Sciences and this in turn has resulted in disposal problems in places like Galilee in Narragansett. Fish wastes, he adds, generate a high biochemical oxygen (BOD) demand and the higher the BOD, the harder it is to treat the wastewater at the sewage treatment plant.
Several years ago, the two squid processors in Galilee produced so much “high-strength wastewater”—high in total suspended solids and BOD—says Jeffry Ceasrine, Narragansett’s town manager who was town engineer at the time, that it overwhelmed the treatment plant at times. “Sometimes our (residential
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waste) flow was high enough to dilute the processing waste, sometimes it was not,” explains Ceasrine who notes that the town’s plant was designed for normal residential wastes. Eventually a pre-treatment program was developed for the two plants and there has not been a problem since although the pre-treatment system results in sludge, disposal of which is an expense for the plants.
The Sea Grant that was obtained by URI has a priority theme of utilizing industrial wastes, notes Lee. A research team of Lee, Dr. Rebecca Brown, a turf researcher in Plant Sciences, Dr. Jose Amador, a researcher in Natural Resources Science and Lori Pivarnik, a coordinator in Nutrition and Food Sciences was formed. All are in the College of the Environment and Life Sciences.
Lee is charged with developing the fertilizer in solid and liquid forms, Brown with doing the field trials on turf plots, Amador with conducting the analysis of the fertilizer, soil fertility and nutrient leaching and Pivarnik with setting up test sites with homeowners next year.
Besides the collaboration going on among researchers at URI, there is yet another potential player in the offing—a Boston based company, whose president is a URI alumnus, is interested is bringing squid fertilizer to market as it already has done with a new catfish fertilizer.
Fish-based fertilizers have been on the market for a long time and their popularity is increasing as more and more gardeners are switching to organic materials rather than those based on petroleum. Up to now organic fertilizers have cost more than conventional fertilizers but with the rise in petroleum prices the gap is being narrowed.
Proponents of organic fertilizers contend that natural products are good soil amendments and that the chemical components are better utilized by plants. Proponents also stress that organic fertilizers contain more micro-nutrients than conventional fertilizers.
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But a common problem with fish and seaweed-based fertilizers is the odor. Using them in a greenhouse can be overwhelming for workers and few homeowners like the idea of a fishy smell on their lawns during a backyard barbecue party.
Two new fertilizers that just have made their debut are Multi Bloom and Mega Green and the man who made them possible is Carl Reetz (URI, ’64), president of Olympic Leasing Corp., of Boston which has leased fish processing equipment in the U.S. and Canada for 20 years. Reetz was interested in converting fish wastes into fertilizer and after searching about for suitable participants he helped form a joint venture called Hydrolysate Corporation of America, (HCA) LLC.
Multi Bloom (for plants) and Mega Green (for turf) are actually the same formulation, says Reetz. The different names were needed for marketing purposes. Both are based on wastes from the huge catfish farms in Mississippi, both come in concentrated liquid form and both are intended for foliar spraying. Both also have two other features—the fish smell is masked by a mint additive to make it more user-friendly and the product is pumped through a fine mesh screen so that it can be used in drip irrigation systems and sprayers without clogging.
According to the company’s literature, the protein in the waste is cold process hydrolyzed and is broken down in 17 short chain amino acids that the makers say can be readily used by plants.
The partners in this venture are Consolidated Catfish Companies of Isola, Mississippi, Gurry Investments, and Ed Zybura, a URI alumnus and a West Coast agronomist who did the field testing. Mississippi State University also did field tests on Multi Bloom with very positive results in bloom and leaf color and root growth over other products, HCA says in its product literature.
Continued on Page 2
Published: June 5 2008
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