Seafood is any seaanimal that is served as food or is suitable for eating. This usually includes sea water animals, such as fish and shellfish (including mollusks, and crustaceans). These sea water animals are also collectively referred to as seafood.
Edible plants of the sea are not considered seafood, even though the come from sea water and are eaten in some parts of the world, for example, edible seaweed, for example nori, and algae.
The harvesting of seafood is known as fishing and the cultivation of seafood is known as aquaculture or mariculture.
From the earliest age of human civilization, seafood had been an important food source that can easily be hunted and gathered even by those lacking power or speed. A basket like trap were widely used to hunt fish in a river and a lake. Sometimes, fish was speared just as one would hunt a small animal. Ancient Egyptian civilization used the symbol of fish for counting large number and it was eaten both dried and fresh. It is looked over too often but the rise of ancient Greek and Roman civilization was in no small part to the abundant fish of Mediterranean Sea. Shellfish was a staple food in many locations and in Jomon period of Japan, amount of shellfish consumed and thrown away from that time is use to measure how many people lived in certain area.
Dishes
Seafood is a source of protein in many diets around the world.
Although filtering can reduce the amount of contaminants in the fish oils fed to the farmed fish, which serve as the source of most of the fat-soluble contaminants in their diets, the approach is generally too expensive to be practical, says Michael Ikonomou, a research scientist for Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO).
Fish oil is used to supplement the diet of fatty fish like salmon to ensure that they contain a sufficiently high percentage of the two long-chain, highly unsaturated, omega 3 fatty acids found in fishæ eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), he explains.
The small pelagic fish used to produce fish meal and oil are important parts of the marine food web, she says.
Fish are consumed as food all over the world, but fresh fish are more so in areas close to seas, rivers, and lakes.
Some fish, such as salmon, tuna and herring are cooked and canned, while desiccation (complete drying) is commonly used to preserve some foodfish, such as cod and partial drying and salting is popular for the preservation of herring and mackerel, among other fish.
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