Sea Hare (Dolobella auricularia) Egg Mass Ceviche

Patent Title: Sea Hare (Dolobella auricularia) Egg Mass Ceviche

​​Description

The food product pertains to ceviche made from sea hare (Dolabella auricularia) egg mass.

Business Potential:

This commodity will help improve the marketability of the sea hare (Dolobella auricularia), increase its market price and improve the income of fishers who will invest in the said commodity.

Innovative Features and Benefits:

The sea hare, Dolabella auricularia, belongs to the Opisthobranch mollusks (Aplyssidae). It is primarily found in shallow tropical shorelines and was observed to feed on algae or seagrasses (Calumpong, 1979). The organism lays a gelatinous string-like egg mass usually cemented to eelgrass or seaweed. The egg mass has been traditionally consumed as human food for quite a long time, and there have been no reported incidents/cases of food poisoning due to ingestion of the egg masses. The egg mass of the sea hare is popular in the Philippines and other parts of the world like Samoa, Kiribati, and Fiji Islands (Singh and Vuki, 2009). Further, anecdotal information claims that eating the egg mass could bring many health benefits to its consumer.

 According to Pepito et al., 2015, Dolobella auricularia is rich in calcium (Ca), iron (Fe), potassium (K), sodium (Na), and zinc (Zn). It also contains six (6) essential and nine (9) non-essential amino acids. In addition, Dolabella auricularia is a rich source of bioactive and structurally unique peptides, such as dolastatins with anticancer activity. It is also reported containing metabolites that show promising cytotoxic and antimicrobial agents.

With this, there is a future high demand for sea hare Dolobella auricularia as another natural food commodity from the marine environment that has health benefits, is cheaper, and is easily employable. Therefore, it is the object of the present utility model to produce ceviche from sea hare (Dolobella auricularia) egg.