How big is a cod's liver?

Factual Questions
1

Inspired by this thread vegetable oil (sorry, I don’t know the answer),

I would like to know why the supermarket health aisles and healthfood shops are stuffed with cod liver oil and cod liver oil capsules when the liver of a cod can only be a titchy little thing.
And even if you mashed it up and centrifuged it out, not all of it would be oil. Would it?
And even if it would, how much would there be? 10ml? 1ml?

Surely there wouldn’t be enough cod in the entire world with livers fat enough to keep Seven Seas going all this time?

I kow a cod is a pelagic fish, so all the fat is stored in its liver, rather than in its flesh, like you see in salmon and mackerel and whatnot, but STILL!

Is a cod simply a liver swimming about in the sea, wrapped in a few scales?

Soemone must know.

2

A single cod weighs 5-10 pounds; about 5-10% of that might be liver, which will in turn yield as much as a quart of oil. Since the liver is always removed before shipping, I’d guess that almost all cod livers end up as cod liver oil, or getting refined down to vitamin A.

However, many different oily fish are sources of “cod liver oil,” and much of it comes from sharks; a single 45-foot shark can yield 600 gallons of liver oil.

3

I’d hate to be the guy to take down that “singe 45-foot shark!” :eek:

4

Do you have any cites Nametag?

Commercially harvested cod are usually around 10 pounds, but the record is 211. Back in the day when my grandpa jigged them from a dory 30-40 pounds was very common.

5

Oops, here’s the rest of the above post.

Everything I can find says that cod liver oil is from cod or the Gadidae family.

Other fish are used, but I think that oil is simply called fish liver oil.

From here.