Hydrocarbon Composition of Salmon in the Gulf of Alaska

Abstract

The hydrocarbon composition in the flesh and liver of salmon, Oncorhynchus nerka, O. keta, O. my kiss, and 0. kisutch, caught in the Gulf of Alaska were analyzed with open-tubular gas-liquid chromatography. The hydrocarbon contents of total lipids were 0.04-0.12% in the flesh and 0.22-0.67% in the liver, respectively. The salmon had normal hydrocarbons ranging in chain length from C13 to C28 with an odd-chain predominance. The major hydrocarbons in present samples were pristance and squalene. The sums of these two components exceeded half of the total hydrocarbons in both tissues of the salmon. C1£>, C20, and C25 isoprenoid hydrocarbons were also detected in this study. While the results in this study suggested that there were relatively small differences in the hydrocarbon composition depending on the species, hardly an difference in the hydrocarbon composition was observed depending on the year of catch and locality in the Gulf of Alaska. © 1993, The Japanese Society of Fisheries Science. All rights reserved.