The Advantage of Slurry Ice as Cooling Media for Fish in Tropical Area

Abstract

The result showed that slurry ice can decrease the temperature of carp (Cyprinus carpio linnaeus) to 0⁰C in 14 minutes while conventional ice block only managed to drop the temperature to 2,5⁰C with a P value of 0.029 > 0.05 (? = 5%).While on Mackerel (Rastrelliger neglectus), slurry ice could drop its temperature to 0⁰C in 12 minutes whilst conventional ice blocks only managed to drop the temperature by 2,8⁰C, P value of 0.0003< 0.05 (=5%). This paper illustrates that the use of slurry icecooling medium is very advantageous for cooling fresh fish that the fish will have higher price and quality.

Slurry ice is a brine solution, which has a diameter of ice less than or equal to 1 mm, that can be pumped to refrigerate fresh fish products. This media is still not familiar in Indonesia because the technology has not been widely used by fishermen in the tropics. Local fishermen still use conventional cooling media in the form of ice blocks that are carried out by fishermen or fish farmers to cool the product. Tropical regions have different characteristics to subtropical, namely; the region have different seasons, thus affecting temperature and salinity of waters.

This study aimed to prove the advantages of slurry ice cooling medium to drop the temperature of fish in the tropics. The method used was comparative analysis between slurry ice cooling media and ice blocks in the treatment of freshwater fish and seawater fish.