Jan
09
How far up the food chain are anchovy, sardines and mackerel?
ByI ask because I’ve been taking some Omega-3 fish oil and from what I understand, fish that are higher up on the food chain have higher concentrations of mercury in them. The fish oil is made out of anchovy, sardines, and mackerel.
6 Comments
January 9th, 2010 at 6:48 am
They are at the bottom. They are small fish and eat microscopic plankton. The higher fish on the chain are large and consume large amounts of mercury containing fish every day. Thus they get larger amounts of the stuff in their system.
January 9th, 2010 at 7:44 am
here on cape cod we call them baitfish. that’s pretty low.
January 9th, 2010 at 7:54 am
Sardines and anchovies are very close to the bottom of the food chain, since they pretty much just eat plankton. Mackerel are a little bigger, and also eat small fish, some squid and small crustaceans.
The only really high-mercury fish are large ocean-dwelling fish like shark, swordfish, king mackerel and some large tuna.
January 9th, 2010 at 8:27 am
Different fish varies, depends on what fish it is. Most fish are carnivores/secondary consumers when they eat smaller fish like shrimp etc. But there are some fish only eat sea weed etc, therefore they are herbivores.
The one’s you take are secondary consumers, therefore they have high omega 3 levels, as they consume alot of other small fish and plankton etc.
January 9th, 2010 at 9:11 am
All Three are Used as Bait in Fishing, Judge for Yourself!
January 9th, 2010 at 9:56 am
Pretty far up, only one or two levels away from the top. These are the fish that are eaten by apex predators, or are eaten by predators that are then eaten by the apex predators.
I’m sure that your fish oil capsules have been purified in a way that they do not contain mercury.