Edible aquatic animals excluding mammals, but including both freshwater and ocean creatures. Seafood includes bony and cartilaginous fishes, crustaceans, mollusks, edible jellyfish, sea turtles, frogs, sea urchins, and sea cucumbers. The roe, or eggs, of some species are eaten as caviar. After cereals, seafood may be mankind's most important food, furnishing about 15percnt of the world's protein intake. Lean fish is equivalent to beef or poultry in its protein yield (18–25percnt by weight), but it is much lower in calories. Much seafood is eaten uncooked, either raw, dried, smoked, salted, pickled, or fermented. Otherwise it is cooked whole or cut into steaks, filets, or chunks. It is often used in stews or soups.
Learn more about seafood with a free trial on Britannica.com.
Research into population trends of various species of seafood is pointing to a global collapse of seafood species by 2048. Such a collapse would occur due to pollution and overfishing, threatening oceanic ecosystems, according to some researchers.
A major international scientific study released in November 2006 in the journal Science found that about one-third of all fishing stocks worldwide have collapsed (with a collapse being defined as a decline to less than 10% of their maximum observed abundance), and that if current trends continue all fish stocks worldwide will collapse within fifty years.
The FAO State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2004 report estimates that in 2003, of the main fish stocks or groups of resources for which assessment information is available, "approximately one-quarter were overexploited, depleted or recovering from depletion (16%, 7% and 1% respectively) and needed rebuilding.
Advocacy organizations such as the National Fisheries Institute, however, disagree with such findings and assert that currently observed declines in fish population are due to natural fluctuations and that enhanced technologies will eventually alleviate whatever impact humanity is having on oceanic life.