FATTY ACID COMPOSITION OF FINLES PORPOISE OIL*
HIDEO TSUYUKI** AND SHINGO ITOH**INTRODUCTION

The Finlesp orpoise, Neomeris phocaenoides, belongs to the porpoise family and is
the smallest of these family. They grow up body length 1.0-1.3 metres and inhabitsin the Indian ocean; from the Cape of Good Hope to Japan, and inJapanese water;
Setonaikai, Shikoku, Kyushu. They live on crastacean, cephalopoda and small
fishes, and independently are in no group.
The literature on the porpoise oils seems to have been a few, but it has beenreported only simple properties of oil.
The writers report here the component fatty acid of Finles porpoise oil that isanalyzed by gas-liquid chromatograph using a hydrogen ionization detector.
The writers wish to express here their thanks to President of The ''\Thales Research Institute, Prof. Dr. Hideo Omura who is kind enough to present us Finles
porpoise.
MATERIAL AND METHOD

Sample used
The Finles porpoise used in this experiment was caught in October 1963 at theHashirimizu of Miura-peninsula, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. The sample wasfrozen as a part of the Finles porpoise, and it was male, but it was unknown aboutage, body length, body weight etc. The oil was extracted by boiling the material withwater from the frozen part and the properties were examined by ordinary methods.
These are shown in Table 1.
Preparation of fatty acid methyl ester
The sample oil was converted to fatty acid methyl ester by alkali-catalyzed
methanolysis and the obtained methyl ester was refined by silicic acid column according to the procedure of Sano et al. (1965, 1966) with the following modification.
The sample oil was soluted in 50 ml of n-hexane, and also 10 ml of anhydrous
methanol and 2 ml of 1/2 N-potassium hydroxide methanol solution as catalyzer
were added. Then, the procedure were conducted on magnetic-stirrer in nitrogen
atmosphere for 1.5 hours with periodic mixing. After the procedure, half-saturated
sodium chloride solution was added, extracted by n-hexane and was washed withwater and evaporated after adding anhydrous sodium sulfate. As result, crude* An outline of this article was presented the Annual Meeting of Japanese Socity of Scientific Fisheries,
Tokyo, April 3, 1967.

** Department of Food Engineering, College of Agriculture & Veterinary Medicine, Nihon University (341, 3-chome, Shimouma, Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan).
131

132

TSUYUKI AND !TOH
TABLE 1.

PROPERTIES OF FINLES PORPOISE OIL

Appearance (at 30°C)
Oil content (%)
Refractive index (at 40°C)
Specific gravity (at 26°C)
Viscosity (at 50°C)
Acid value
Iodine value (Wijs)
Saponification value
Unsaponifiables (%)

Yellowish orange liquid
62.7
1.4727
0.94350.49702.7
91.3
208.00.80

fatty acid methyl ester was obtained. Then, for the purpose of removal of colesterol,colouring material, impurities etc., the crude methyl ester was once again soluted in
5 ml of n-hexane, and passed through in glass column (in diameter 1.0 cm) packed
with 2.0 grams ofsilicic acid activated at 120°C for half an hour. The glass column
was washed with 60 ml of 2 % ethyl ether-n-hexane. The solution extracted by 2 %ethyl ether-n-hexane was added anhydrous sodium sulfate and then evaporated.
The refined methyl ester was obtained in amount of 4.0 grams which was no smell
and colourless, and was used in gas-liquid chromatograph analysis.
In addition, all procedures were conducted in nitrogen atmosphere, including
release of a vacuum in the evaporating steps.
Gas-liquid chromatograph apparatus and conditions
Gas-liquid chromatograph apparatus used in this experiment was conducted
on a dual-column Shimadzu Gas Chromatograph Apparatus, Model GC-IC, using
a hydrogen flame ionization detector. A stainless steel, U sharped column, 225 cm
long and 3 mm in diameter, was packed with 20 %diethylene glycol succinate (DEGS)
on Shimalite at l.85kg/cm 2 • The column oven was maintained at 215°C, and theflow rate of nitrogen gas was 72-76ml/min. The injector temperature was 260°C
and detector temparature 240°C.
The individual fatty acid peaks were identified by comparing retention timewith those in a known mixture of standard fatty acids, and semilogarithmic plotsof carbon number vs relative retention time were used for identification by methodof Nelson et al. (1960).
The identification of the unsaturated acids was checked further by hydrogenation
over platinum black followed by gas-liquid chromatograph on the same condition.
All fatty acids are reported as weight percentages of the total known fatty
acids presented by method ofMagidman et al. (1962).
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The data obtained 26 of fatty acids as shown in Table 2. In these, saturated fatty
acids are as follows; C 8 , C 10 , C 12 , C 13 , C 14 , C 15 , C 16 , C 18 , C 19 and C 20 , and unsaturated fatty acids are as follows; C 12 monoenoic, C 14 monoenoic, C 14 dienoic, C 16
monoenoic, C 16 dienoic, C 16 trienoic, C 18 monoenoic, C 18 dienoic, C 18 trienoic, C 20133

FINLES PORPOISE OIL
TABLE 2.

FATTY ACID COMPOSITION OF FINLESPORPOISE OIL'Veight per cent of total fatty acid
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.9
0.7
0.2
0.4
8.4
4.1
0.7

Fatty acid No.
81012-branched1212-11314-branched1414-1
14-2
15
16
16-1
16-2
16-3
18
18-1
18-2
18-3
1920
20-1
20-3
20-4
22-5
22-6

TABLE 3.

A COMPARISON OF SATURATED AND UNSATURATEDFATTY ACID OF FINLES PORPOISE OIL

Fatty acidNo.
810121314151618192022Total

1.17.226.91.9
1.2
0.9
20.4
2.1
2.0
1.6
1.8
1.4
1.7
4.6
3.9
5.3

'Veight per cent of total fatty acid
Unsaturated
Saturated
0.1
0.2
0.7
1.2
0.2
4.8
8.8
1.1

7.2
0.9
1.6
1.8
23.1

30.0
24.5
7.7
9.2
76.9

monoenoic, C 20 trienoic, C 20 tetraenoic, C 22 pentaenoic and C 22 hexaenoic. Moreover, there are branched-saturated fatty acids of C 12 and C14'
In the aspect of percentages of total fatty acids, the prominent fatty acid is C 16
monoenoic (26.9 %), the next prominent is C 18 monoenoic (20.4 %). Other per-134

TSUYUKI AND ITOH

centages of component fatty acids were in order of high content as follows; saturated
C 14 (8.4 %), saturated C 16 (7.2 %), C 22 hexaenoic (5.3 %), C 20 tetraenoic (4.6 %),C14 monoenoic (4.1 %), C 22 pentaenoic (3.9 %), C 18 dienoic (2.1 %), C18 trienoic(2.0 %), C 16 dienoic (1.9 %), saturated C 20 (1.8 %), C 20 trienoic (1. 7 %), saturated
C 19 (1.6 %), C 20 monoenoic (1.4 %), C 16 trienoic (1.2 %), saturated C 15 (1.1 %),saturated C 12 (0.9 %), saturated C18 (0.9 %), C 12 monoenoic (0. 7 %), C 14 dienoic(0. 7 %), branched saturated C 14 (0.4 %), branched saturated C12 (0.3 %), saturated
C 10 (0.2 %), saturated C 13 (0.2 %), and saturated C 8 (0.1 %).
Viewing in comparison of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids (shown in Table3), the total of saturated fatty acids is 23.l %, on the other hand, the total of unsaturated fatty acids is 76.9 %·SUMMARY

1) The properties of Finles porpoise oil were studied.
2) Fatty acid composition of Finles porpoise oil was analyzed by gas-liquid
chromatograph using a hydrogen ionization detector on a DEGS column.
3) The results obtained are as follows;
Total saturated fatty acids
octanoic
decanoic
dodecanoic
dodecanoic (branched)
tridecanoic
tetradecanoic
tetradecanoic (branched)pentadecanoic
hexadecanoic
octadecanoic.
.
e1cosano1c

23.1 %:
0.1 %
0.2%
0.9%
0.3%
0.2%
8.4%
0.4%
1.1 %
7.2%
0.9%
1.8%

Total unsaturated fatty acids
C 12 monoenoic
C 14 monoenoic
C 14 dienoic
c16 monoenoic
C 16 dienoic
c16 trienoic
C 18 monoenoic
C 18 dienoic
c18 trienoic
C 20 monoenoic
C 20 trienoic

76.9%:
0.7%
4.1 %
0.7%
26.9%
1.9%
1.9%
20.4%
2.1 %
2.0%
1.4%
1.7%

FINLES PORPOISE OIL

135

4.6%
3.9%
5.3%

C 20 tetraenoic
C 22 pentaenoic
C 22 hexaenoic
REFERENCESHERB, S. E. MAGIDMAN. P. LUDDY, F. E. and RrnMENSHNEIDER, R. W. (1962). Fatty acid cow milk, II.
Composition by gas-liquid chromatograph aided by other methods of fractionation. J. Am. Oil Chemists'Soc., 39: 142-146.
NELSON, G.]. and FREEMAN, N. K. (1960). Phospholipide and phospholipide-fatty acid component of humanserum lipoprotein fractions. ]. Biol. Chem., 235: 578-583.
SANO, Y. AYUKAWA, D. and MuRASE, K. (1965). Studies on the Antarctic whale oils by gas-liquid chromatography using a hydrogen ionization detector. II. J. Japan Oil Chemists' Soc., 14: 171-178.
SANO, Y. (1966) Studies on the Antarctic whale oils by gas-liquid chromatography using a hydrogen ionization detector. III. J. Japan Oil Chemists' Soc., 15: 99-108.