SFOS Newsletter
Spring 2008
FEATURED FACULTY
Alexandra de Oliveira, Assistant Professor
UAF Fishery Industrial Technology Center
by Carin Stephens, SFOS Public Information Officer
Alexandra de Oliveira has “fish fever”—she loves fish and the science of fish. A scientist at the Fishery Industrial Technology Center in Kodiak, Oliveira’s work focuses on fisheries chemistry and seafood science. Born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Oliveira now calls Kodiak home. When I asked her why she liked living in Kodiak, she said, “because I love fish-- and this is the place to be if you love fish!”
Alexandra de Oliveira.
Oliveira knew she wanted to study chemistry from an early age. As a child, she played with chemistry sets and even set her mother’s kitchen table on fire during an experiment. A chemistry whiz, she began synthesizing pharmaceutical compounds as a college freshman, when she was seventeen.
During her master’s studies, she worked full-time as a flavorist for a large tobacco company during the day while she wrote a thesis about the relationship between molecular structure and odor at night. After coming to the University of Florida as a Ph.D. student, she replicated fruit fly pheromones for the creation of traps to protect Florida oranges and created polymer coatings for computer chips. Then she discovered fish.
When did you know you wanted to study fish?
During my first semester as a Ph.D. student, I was working on this project synthesizing coatings for computer processors. This was very hard core chemistry and I was doing what I call “pure chemistry”. I really wanted to work in “applied chemistry”. I found a position in the food science department, working with my Ph.D. co-advisors Dr. Sean O’Keefe and Dr. Murat Balaban. That’s when I first started working with fish. I started working on a project determining quality parameters of cultured Gulf of Mexico sturgeon and its potential as a food commodity.
When I first went in to visit the sturgeons, I fell in love with them. These animals were so fascinating-- they were alive, and I had never had an opportunity to work with anything alive. I could take them out of a tank and study them, study rigor mortis, the quality of the muscle, the lipids, and especially the impact of diet to muscle quality.
Why do you prefer applied chemistry to pure chemistry?
Well, I see the value of both. One needs the other and vice versa. If you prove an idea that doesn’t really apply to anything, it just sits in a drawer and is not really important to humankind. I am more interested in science that can improve somebody’s life. That is one of the reasons I became so interested in food, because it is a bare necessity. We all need food and clean water.
Tell me about your research at the Fish Tech Center.
I work with marine lipids, which are the main energy reservoir for fish. Especially in cold water, the transfer of lipids through the food chain is quite important because it is a source of energy. Lipids provide twice as many calories than carbohydrates or protein. Marine lipids are especially important because they contain Omega-3 fatty acids, which are essential to human health. Marine oils and marine lipids from wild fish have significant amounts of EPA and DHA, two Omega-3 fatty acids that are required in many biochemical and metabolic functions of the body.
Alexandra de Oliveira.
Is there a difference between fisheries science and seafood science?
We need to view fisheries in a more holistic way. Live fish and dead fish are a continuation, a process that goes on, from the fish in the ocean to the way the fish are harvested, to when they are on your dinner plate. Right now I think we tend to look at fish as either a fish is in the ocean or the fish is on our plate. The idea of ocean to plate is something that is very important. I would like to work more with fisheries scientists because what we do at Fish Tech is fisheries utilization. It’s a matter of semantics, you can call it seafood science or you can call it fisheries utilization. We look at the way the resource is utilized from a human point of view.
Who do you see as benefiting from your research?
We are working on a lot of projects right now. For example, we are currently building a knowledge database about the nutritional values of various fish species from various regions around Alaska. This database will allow members of the public or the fishing industry look up the fat content, protein and amino acids in, say, spiny dogfish livers, or in immature pollock roe. It’s sort of like a manual for the industry. Fishing companies increasingly need to know the dietary value of the fish they are catching. We hope this will help with that.
Dr. Oliveira works in a variety of research areas at the Fish Tech Center, including marine lipids, food volatiles (flavors and odors), seafood quality, seafood by-products and seafood safety. She has been a faculty member at UAF since 2001.
- Visit Dr. Oliveira's webpage
- Back to Spring 2008 Newsletter