The origin and metabolism of marine fatty acids: The effect of diet on the depot fats of mugil cephalus (The common mullet)

It appears that young mullet make excellent experimental fish for dietary studies. They are hardy, easily caught, resistant to disease, and take well to aquaria conditions. Of particular interest, they may be fed synthetic food and they resist changes in salinity well. These experiments indicate that, on a fatfree diet, the mullet does not synthesize the large amounts of polyunsaturated fatty acids normally found in its body fat. However the mullet, like land animals, can apparently convert dienoic acid from cottonseed oil into small amounts of tetraenoic, pentaenoic, and hexaenoic acids. Unlike land animals, the mullet appears to be capable of the conversion of linoleic acid to a trienoic acid. Finally, when fed a diet containing a typical marine fat such as menhaden oil, the mullet stores it almost unchanged.