could be readily separated frcm the other waste parts while they 

 are traveling along a belt, chute or trough. 



Problems of handling and storir^ salmon eggs for subsequent 

 processing are expected to be somewhat easier to overcome than those 

 of other fractions of salmon cannery waste, because the eggs are indi- 

 vidually encased in a tough semi-permeable monbrane and the entire 

 egg mass is held together in a skein strxicture which offers ease of 

 handling and seme protection from contamination. If it were found 

 necessary to hold or store the salmon eggs for a considerable period 

 of time before processing, this could be readily accomplished by 

 salting, freezing, or possibly by the use of adding a small amount 

 of a chemical preservative. Salmon eggs appear to offer a unique 

 material for chemical processing due to their special constituents and 

 because of the size of the roe in salmon waste and the enormous quanti- 

 ty that is available in alaska. 



Experimental 



Before accurate assessment of the possibility of recovering chol- 

 esterol frcHn salmon eggs could be made, it was necessary to determine 

 the quantity of cholesterol present in this portion of the cannery 

 waste as it occurs in Alaska. Since a complete survey of the varia- 

 tion in cholesterol content due to size of fish, maturity and location 

 of capture would require an expenditure of a large amount of time and 

 money, it was decided to limit the preliminary analysis to a sample of 

 eggs from 25 to 100 fisn of each species in orxier to furnish a fairly 

 representative approximation of the cholesterol content to be encoun- 

 tered. It was believed that if a fairly high concentration of choles- 

 terol were found in certain samples, additional studies would be justi- 

 fied in order to promote canraercial exploitation. 



The egg samples for the analyses presented in the following report 

 for all species of salmon except king were collected during the 1947 

 fishing season at two sadmon canneries located at Ketchikan, Alaska. 

 The samples of king eggs were collected from Columbia River chinook 

 salmon at a cannery located at Astoria, Oregon. Each sample of af>- 

 proximately 35 ix)und3 of raw eggs represented the roe from 25 to 100 

 salmon of the individual species. Samples of each species other than 

 king were obtained directly from the "Iron Chink" butchering operation 

 with no attempt to segregate the material according to size or maturity. 

 The salmon were trap-caught in most instances and repi^sented fish of 

 average size and maturity for the area. The eggs were inspected for 

 the presence of other waste parts before being sealed in five-gallon 

 tin containers and frozen in a sharp freezer at -20°F. within four 

 hours after collection. All sanples were held at 0°F. storage until 

 thawed arvl ground prior to chemical analysis. Each analysis reported 

 in Table 1 (pageyi) was made on a representative sample drawn from the 

 entire 35-pound lot of thoroughly mixed ground eggs. This small rep- 



68 



