Green Lipped Mussels
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The purpose of this site is to provide you with some information about Green Lipped Mussels and some of the products available. Green Lipped Mussel Extract is made from New Zealand Green Mussels. The main producing region is the Marlborough Sounds which are located at the top of the South Island of New Zealand. This is a beautiful part of New Zealand with great scenery and unpolluted waters.
The mussel farming industry in the Marlborough Sounds started in the sea's. The early days of the industry were dominated by research and development, local sales, and an extract used to help alleviate arthritis.
New Zealand today has over 550 mussel farms totaling 4500 hectares, most of them in the Marlborough Sounds. Large farms proposed for open coastal regions could result in a 10-fold expansion in area in the near future, and increased awareness of mussel farming’s impact on the marine environment. We know that the Marlborough Sounds is a place of outstanding beauty, where wedge-shaped hills shelter a network of shining waterways. With few roads connecting the Pelorus, Queen Charlotte, Anakiwa and outer Sounds, many bays and coves are seldom visited. This is the environment where several hundred mussel farmers cultivate New Zealand Greenshell mussels, inconspicuous beneath barrel-like floats. This paradise is the workplace where marine farming staff, utilising world leading technologies, cultivate Marlborough’s world famous products.
The deep, clean and cool waters of the Marlborough Sounds provide an ideal environment for raising mussels from spat through to harvest, with sound cultivation methods ensuring they grow quickly and are sand and grit-free. Shellfish health and seawater purity are rigorously monitored, and the various companies and farmers have adopted an environmental code of practice which ensures our the safety of the area's unspoilt beauty.
In the New Zealand greenshell mussel-farming cycle are seeding nursery lines of tiny baby mussels or spat, held in place with a continuous tubular cotton stocking which biodegrades when no longer needed. Greenshell mussels are farmed using a series of buoys and ropes. A line of buoys is anchored to the sea floor at both ends, using a rope (referred to as a longline) on either side. These longlines can not exceed 110m in length. Attached to the longline at regular intervals is the growing line, which is a single rope that can be up to several kilometres long. The length of this rope is determined by the depth of water that the farm occupies, and the maximum depth desired.
The use of a single rope was pioneered in New Zealand. Prior to its development, single weighted ropes were dropped at regular intervals from the longlines. Mussel spat is attached to the rope, and encased in a mesh stocking that dissolves in seawater over a few weeks, by which time the spat is normally attached to the line. The bulk, though, is sourced from the beaches of Kaitaia, in New Zealand's north and nearby Golden Bay. After three to six months, the nursery lines are lifted and the young mussels removed then seeded at a sparser rate onto a thicker and much longer rope, where they remain until harvest. Depending on site and the number of mussels growing per metre of rope, the cycle from seed to harvest takes 12 to 18 months for 90-120 mm mussels.
The mussels are harvested when ready by lifting the lines and removing the mussels from it. Harvesting is synchronised with factory production so as to ensure mussels spend a minimum time out of the water, and is suspended if significant rain falls (to eliminate the risk of bacteria being washed off the land and ingested) and during spawning (when shellfish become undernourished). The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), is employed to monitor rainfall using automatic gauges situated throughout the Marlborough Sounds. All of New Zealand's shellfish-producing waters are regularly monitored for the presence of naturally occurring but potentially toxic algal blooms, with harvesting temporarily ceased if their presence is confirmed. Such blooms are extremely rare in our Marlborough Sounds and never widespread, possibly due to geographical isolation and relatively cool waters. Mussel farms tend to act as man made reefs and as such attract a large number of small fish.
Marine farming contributes significantly to employment in Marlborough with an estimated 1500 full time equivalent jobs. The industry has a global reputation as the leader in farming innovations and the management of food safety programmes, especially in the field of biotoxin management of the growing waters. The industry and the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology are developing significant training programmes from pre-employment through to post graduate with the central focus in Marlborough. The Marlborough District Council (Unitary Authority) is the most experienced Council in New Zealand processing marine farming applications under the Resource Management Act. Marine farming has revitalised the small rural towns such as Havelock and Rai Valley and coastal communities of the Marlborough Sounds such as Waitaria Bay. World demand for seafood is growing. The wild fishery cannot increase to equal this demand while the aquaculture industry can and will. Already nearly one third of the world’s fish and shellfish is produced by aquaculture. Aquaculture is the fastest growing sector of the international food industry with production growing at 15% per annum. The aquaculture industry is forecasting growth to achieve $1 billion export revenues by the year 2020. As the capital of the New Zealand aquaculture industry, a significant proportion of the industry’s intellectual property resides in Marlborough, presenting an array of opportunities, especially in the supply of infra-structural products and services and the commercialisation of intellectual property. Greenshell mussels is the largest segment of the aquaculture industry, nationally growing around 55,000 tonnes annually (2002). The product is processed locally at factories located in Picton, Havelock, and Blenheim or sent to Nelson and Christchurch. Processed mussels are exported to over 50 countries world-wide. Production from mussel farms in Marlborough account for 80% of the country’s export production. Almost all the mussels grown in Marlborough are exported.
GREEN LIPPED MUSSEL HEALTH BENEFITS
Green Lipped Mussels contain five kinds of Omega-3 (EPA, DHA, ETA, OTA, etc) all of which are necessarily for the human body. Green Lipped Mussel Extract also contains a rich blend of natural proteins, minerals and mucopolysaccharides. These naturally occurring Mussel Extract substances are increasingly being recognised as helping joint mobility, cartilage maintenance, good health and general well being.
Green lip mussel inhibits inflammation in the body. Although inflammation is normal under certain conditions, consistent or excessive inflammation can result in pain and damage to the body, including the joints. The human body makes several chemical mediators of inflammation. Levels of these chemicals in the body may be higher in people with rheumatoid arthritis who are experiencing symptoms than in symptom-free people with arthritis. Evidence indicates that controlling the production of inflammatory mediators in the body may help improve conditions such as arthritis, asthma, psoriasis, and inflammatory bowel disease (including ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease), all of which involve elements of inflammation.
The major fatty acids of New Zealand Green Mussel are docosahexaenoic acid (DHA: 22:6 n-3) (19%), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA; 20:5 n-3) and palmitic acid (16:0), both 15%. Cholesterol is the most prominent sterol (31% of total sterols). Other major sterols include desmosterol / brassicasterol, 24-methylenecholesterol, trans-22-dehydrocholesterol, 24-nordehydrocholesterol and occelasterol.
Lyprinol ( stabilised lipid extract of New Zealand green lipped mussel ): a potential preventative treatment modality for inflammatory bowel disease. J Gastroenterol. 2005 Apr;40(4):361-5. Tenikoff D, Murphy KJ, Le M, Howe PR, Howarth GS.Child Health Research Institute, Women's and Children's Hospital, North Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. Lyprinol (Pharmalink International), the stabilised lipid extract of the New Zealand green-lipped mussel, is currently used to relieve symptoms of arthritis. We investigated the effect of pretreatment with lipid extract of the New Zealand green lipped mussel on experimentally induced inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in mice. METHODS: Male C57BL/6 mice (aged 6 weeks) were gavaged daily for 13 days with (150 microl) olive oil (OO; n = 7), fish oil (FO; n = 8), or LYP (n = 8). Mice consumed 2% dextran sulfate sodium (DSS) for 6 days, starting on day 7. Body weight and disease activity index (DAI) scores were recorded daily. Colonic damage was determined by histopathology. Colonic inflammation was quantified by myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity. RESULTS: lipid extract of the New Zealand green-lipped mussel treatment significantly reduced body weight loss, DAI scores, crypt area losses, and cecum and colon weights, compared with FO treatment. MPO activity was not significantly affected by any treatment. CONCLUSIONS: These findings provide preliminary evidence that lipid extract of the New Zealand Mussels may be potentially useful in ameliorating symptoms of IBD. The benefit, however, is unlikely to be due to the omega-3 fatty acid content. Dose-response evaluation of lipid extract of the New Zealand green-lipped mussel in experimental IBD is warranted.
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