Seafood Facts & Info

Good cooking starts with knowing what you're cooking. This library was built over years of answering customer questions — about molting lobsters, littlenecks versus cherrystones, what "new shell" means, and whether a crayfish is a baby lobster (it is not). Each article below stands on its own; together they make a working education in North Atlantic seafood.

The Lobster Shelf

• Lobster — the full primer: the American lobster fishery, hard-shell versus new-shell, nutrition, buying formats and storage. The longest article in the library, and the one to start with.
• Maine Lobster — why "from Maine" matters: flavor, health, convenience, versatility and the conservation ethic of Maine's harvesters.
• Lobster Facts — the rapid-fire Q&A: bathtubs, red shells, roe, tomalley, molting and more. LIVE lobsters — now what? This page is the answer.

Shellfish & Specialties

• Clams — hard-shell quahogs from littleneck to chowder grade, soft-shell steamers, and how each size earns its place on the menu.
• Crab — the Atlantic blue crab: biology, the fishery, and why Callinectes sapidus translates to "beautiful savory swimmer."
• Caviar — sturgeon roe from beluga to American farmed white sturgeon, with serving traditions.

Why We Keep a Library

Seafood is the last truly wild food most kitchens handle, and it rewards understanding. Knowing that a soft-shell clam squirts because its siphon hangs outside its shell, or that a lobster's shell color says nothing about its flavor, changes how you shop and how you cook. It is also simply good reading: the library's pages are full of the kind of detail — wampum currency in a quahog shell, a crab name that translates to "beautiful savory swimmer," caviar's journey from czars to California farms — that turns a meal into a story told at the table. For fishery science beyond our shelves, NOAA Fisheries publishes accessible species profiles for nearly everything that swims off American coasts.

When the reading turns to appetite, the recipe collection puts all of it to work — and the category guides (live lobster, fresh fillets, king crab) cover the practical buying side.