Seafood

seafood, edible aquatic animals, excluding mammals, but including both freshwater and ocean creatures. Most nontoxic aquatic species are exploited for food by humans. Even those with toxic properties, such as certain blowfish, can be prepared so as to circumvent harm to the consumer.

Fish and other seafood may be humanity’s most important food, after cereals, furnishing about 15 percent of the world population’s protein intake. Lean fish muscle provides 18–25 percent protein by weight, the equivalent of beef or poultry, but is much lower in calories. In fish one gram of protein is present for 4 to 10 calories, as contrasted with 10–20 calories per protein gram for lean meats and up to 30 for fatty meats.

Seafood comprises all bony fishes and the more primitive sharks, skates, rays, sawfish, sturgeons, and lampreys; crustaceans such as lobsters, crabs, shrimps, prawns, and crayfish; mollusks, including clams, oysters, cockles, mussels, periwinkles, whelks, snails, abalones, scallops, and limpets; the cephalopod mollusks—squids, octopuses, and cuttlefish; edible jellyfish; sea turtles; frogs; and two echinoderms—sea urchins and sea cucumbers.