Seafood Handbook Shellfish Page
The Seafood Handbook is the most comprehensive seafood directory available online. Featuring more than 100 of the most common seafood species in the U.S. market, the Seafood Handbook is the ultimate guide to seafood sourcing and preparation, brought to you by the editors of SeaFood Business magazine. And it’s free!
Search by finfish or shellfish, or by geographic region. For each type of seafood species, there is a comprehensive overview of the item, its origin, history, availability, product attributes, nutritional value and cooking tips, along with an original hand-drawn depiction.
Explore Shellfish by searching here:
Unlike most of the world, where the Pacific oyster has taken over the oyster grounds, America still has its native oyster, the same one that fed the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. Today, two-thirds of the national oyster harvest is Eastern oysters. While Pacific oysters are mostly cultivated, Eastern… Read More
Not long ago, Jonah crabs were considered little more than a nuisance by lobstermen off New England and the Canadian Maritimes, who routinely tossed the crustaceans back when they came up in lobster traps. But in the 1990s, as demand for an alternative to established and costly crab species grew,… Read More
The largest of the commercially harvested crabs, king crabs are characterized by spiny shells and long, spidery legs. Most crabs have 10 appendages, but king crabs have six walking legs, one large “killer” claw and one small “feeder” claw. The best meat is the merus, which comes from the… Read More
A small cousin of sea scallops, bay scallops average 70 to 100 meats per pound. They are dredged, raked or tonged from bays, harbors and salt ponds along the East Coast from Atlantic Canada to North Carolina and processed ashore. They are also farmed in Nova Scotia and New England in suspended… Read More
Spiny lobsters lack the large front claws of the American lobster and are prized instead for their tail meat, which accounts for 33 percent of the body weight. Some 30 species of spiny lobster are found in tropical and subtropical waters around the world. They are marketed in the United States as… Read More
Squid are cephalopods, a word meaning “head foot.” They are a close relative of the octopus and a distant relative of bivalve mollusks. More than 300 species inhabit the world’s oceans, but fewer than a dozen comprise 90 percent of the global catch; of them, three comprise the domestic suppy.… Read More
Surf clams are often the “fried clams” featured on menus across the country. This is the most important clam species, by volume, in the United States. Surf clams average 4 1/2 to 8 inches across. They’re taken by hydraulic dredges from sand or gravel habitats in depths of 10 to 300 feet. The… Read More
The rock shrimp is a deepwater cousin of the pink, brown and white Gulf shrimp species (Penaeus spp.), but its popularity in the domestic market was slower to develop. The crustacean gets its name from its rock-hard shell, which presented a challenge for processors until a machine was developed to… Read More
A10-armed mollusk related to octopus and squid, the cuttlefish sports a flat, oblong body and narrow fins. The body is larger and fatter than a squid, making it meatier, and the ink sac is larger than that of the squid or octopus, with darker ink. One pair of arms, which retracts into pouches, is… Read More
Found in most northern waters, pink shrimp rank among the most important commercial shrimp species in the world. In the North Atlantic, they range from Greenland south to Martha’s Vineyard in the west, and from Iceland and Greenland south to Britain in the east. In the northeastern Pacific, they… Read More
Recent Articles
April 19, 2024
