Life on the Seabed: Bottom-Dwelling Fish and Shellfish

Razor clams burrow in sandy tidal flats along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, and their long narrow shells give them the name. Because the texture is delicate they are cooked fast, grilled, fried or sauteed, and they are a prized ingredient in Spanish cooking, where they are called navajas.

The Pacific geoduck is the largest burrowing clam in the world, with a shell of 15 to over 20 centimeters and a siphon that can reach a meter. It lives about 140 years, and the siphon is prized for its crunch in Chinese hot pot and Japanese sashimi.

The barramundi is a demersal fish of coastal waters, estuaries, lagoons and rivers across the Indo-West Pacific. It is catadromous and does not migrate far, so northern Australia has its own genetically distinct population, where it is a well known food and sport fish.

Flounder names a group of flatfish that live on ocean floors worldwide, and during metamorphosis one eye migrates across the head so that both end up on the upward-facing side. Adults lie camouflaged near muddy bottoms, docks and reefs and ambush crustaceans and small fish.

Sole are flatfish, and the Dover sole, Solea solea, is the most esteemed of the European soles. The name comes from the Latin for sandal, and heavy beam-trawling has driven stocks to about ten percent of pre-industrial levels, which led Greenpeace to place it on its seafood red list.

Turbot is a large diamond-shaped flatfish of sandy seabeds in the northeastern Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Baltic. Its thick firm white flesh made it a premium fish in French haute cuisine, usually poached, roasted or grilled with a simple butter or cream sauce, and it is now also farmed in Spain and France.

Skate are flat cartilaginous bottom-dwellers related to rays, and only the wing, the flattened pectoral fin, is usually eaten. The flesh is fibrous and mildly sweet, and the classic French dish is raie au beurre noir, served with brown butter and capers; because it can smell of ammonia as it ages, it is eaten very fresh.

Whelks are carnivorous sea snails that live on the seafloor and drill through the shells of mussels and other prey. The meat is chewy and mildly briny and appears in Japanese tsubu-gai, Korean golbaengi-muchim and the coastal cooking of the British Isles, though the species called whelk differs by region.

Sablefish, also called black cod although it is not a true cod, lives on muddy seafloors of the North Pacific at great depths. Its soft, fatty flesh is buttery, and in Japan it is called gindara and marinated in miso or sake lees before broiling, the preparation known abroad as black cod with miso.