The term shellfish is generally applied to all invertebrate marine organisms having visible shells. They may be broadly categorized as crustaceans and mollusks.

The crustaceans include lobsters, crabs, crayfish, and both shrimp and the closely related but larger prawns. The shells consist mainly of a hard, inedible substance called chitin. Crustaceans molt frequently during growth. Blue crabs are eaten when molting and soft-shelled. Marine lobsters are eaten when about five years old and have by then molted about 25 times.

With the development of satisfactory freezing techniques in the 1940s, shrimping expanded considerably, becoming a global operation. The United States is a major consumer, importing shrimp, mainly frozen, from more than 60 countries. South Africa and Australia have developed a worldwide market for rock lobster, and Japan and Russia dominate the world market for king crab.

The major mollusks consumed as food are oysters, mussels, clams, scallops, whelks, and snails. The best-known marine snail is the abalone, encountered in many warm waters. This group also includes the octopus, squid, and cuttlefish, popular seafoods in Mediterranean countries and the Far East.

Sea cucumbers (holothurians), or sea slugs, are usually marketed under the name of trepang or bêche-de-mer. Rich in protein, they are eaten in China, Southeast Asia, Australia, and Italy.

Mammals

Ocean mammals include such cetaceans as whales, porpoises, and dolphins, as well as seals and walruses. Whales are a source of meat, fats, and oils, hormones such as insulin, and chemicals. They exist at all levels of ocean food chains. The blue whale mainly devours small reddish shrimp called krill, while the formidable killer whale feeds on salmon, seals, and sharks. The number of species, although still large, has declined considerably. See the article whaling.

The hunting of porpoises and dolphins preceded whaling in history. Dolphins were eaten in ancient times around the Mediterranean, and Xenophon and his Greek army found sizable stores of salted dolphin meat in earthenware vessels on the Black Sea coast. Their use as food there continued until banned by the Soviet Union in the interest of preserving the animals for biologic research. Many tropical islanders still hunt dolphin on a large scale. Freshwater dolphins are caught in many of the world’s great rivers, including the Ganges, Indus, and Brahmaputra, the Amazon, and the Río de la Plata. The dolphins of Chinese rivers have been eradicated, but a number survive in the lake regions of the upper Yangtze.

Seaweeds and plankton

Marine plants may be divided into two groups: grasses and algae. There is only one subaquatic grass of any significance, namely eelgrass. Algae that grow in a fixed location, generally called seaweeds, may be categorized according to colour, into green, brown, red, or blue-green. Brown algae, sometimes called kelp, may grow to exceptional sizes; some specimens attain a length of 50 metres or more.

Seaweeds are heavily exploited in many parts of the globe for human as well as animal food. Several species are extensively cultivated on the coastal shelves of China, Japan, the Philippines, and elsewhere. Brown species in particular are harvested in Japan and made into a number of food products. Several are used as material for various thickening agents.

Cultivated red seaweeds belong to the genus Porphyra. Their sun-dried, blackish fronds are shaped into sheets and used in the Orient as a wrapping for rice. Harvested along the coasts of Ireland and Scotland, red seaweed is made into a powder and used as the main ingredient of a kind of bread called laver. Seaweeds contribute to the diet accessory nutrients such as vitamins B₆ and B₁₂.

Phytoplankton does not offer man a suitable food and can hardly be used even as feed for animals. Many species are toxic; the rest are scarcely digestible. In addition, most plankton finish their life cycle within a few days or weeks and are usually devoured by predators. Consequently, the amount of plankton in the water at any given moment is small, even though total plankton production over a year may, in a particular water, well exceed that of fish. Plankton harvesting is therefore very difficult, because of the volume of water that must be sieved, but several attempts to develop a feasible harvesting device have been undertaken. The Japanese, Burmese, and East Indians have managed to develop profitable fisheries for certain tiny shrimp that feed on plankton. The shrimp are dried or fermented into pastes. Elsewhere similar plankton-fed shrimp are sun dried and sold as a snack.

Unicellular green algae, such as Chlorella and Scenedesmus, have been artificially cultivated, yielding 75 tons per hectare (30 tons per acre) per year, compared with the standard wheat yield of 2.5 to 3.7 tons. However, the process is costly, since algae, in addition to harvesting, require decolorization and special processing to remove or break down the cell walls through drying and enzyme action in order to become digestible. It is far more efficient to use such plankton directly as fish feed in cultivation ponds or in the raising of cattle and poultry. Blue-green algae easily create waterblooms, slimy accumulations that may be dried in the sun and molded into small loaves with a nutlike flavour and high in protein. This food is extracted from Lake Chad in tropical Africa, and the Aztecs made a similar product. In China a scum called lan, collected from ponds and freshwater lakes, provides sustenance for large numbers of people. A related scum, keklap, found in Java, is used chiefly as fish feed. Another species is made into dried sheets in Japan and prepared for food by heating in water. Successful cultivation of some blue-green species has been carried through on a semicommercial scale.