Everyone enjoys a good crawfish boil. They taste phenomenal and are great for bringing the family together.
However, there is an ongoing confusion about whether crawfish are seafood or not as they aren’t usually caught from the sea.
As a self-proclaimed crawfish connoisseur I would like to bring an end to this confusion. So, are crawfish considered seafood?
Crawfish look like lobsters, but they are mostly freshwater crustaceans. However, crawfish is considered seafood since all aquatic sea life like fish, seashells, and crustaceans are seafood whether they are from freshwater or saltwater.
In this article, I will talk about crawfish and discuss if crawfish are seafood or not. To make things clear, you should first know what seafood is.
Are Crawfish Considered Seafood?
Any life form from the sea consumed by humans as food is called seafood. Seafood mainly refers to any kind of fish and shellfish.
Different species of crustaceans (shrimp, lobster, crabs), mollusks (oysters, clams, octopus), and echinoderms (sea cucumbers. sea urchins) are types of shellfish.
If you consider the definition of seafood, then crawfish are seafood. It belongs to the crustacean subphylum of Arthropoda phylum.
Although Crawfish is a freshwater animal, it is also considered to be seafood. Besides, there are a few species of crawfish that live in saltwater.
Lobsters are undoubtedly sea creatures making them seafood. Crawfish and lobsters besides their habitats are not very much different.
Crawfish are like small lobster. They are often confused as lobsters for their anatomical similarities. They both come from the Crustacea subphylum and Decapoda order.
Because of these similarities, people often categorize crawfish as seafood. But lobsters live in oceans or seas. On the other hand, almost all the species of crawfish live in freshwater.
Like lobsters, crawfish has a cylinder body, but it is comparatively smaller than the lobsters. They have a joined head and midsection. Their body is divided into segments.
Crawfish can be blue,green, yellow, red, and brown. There is a sharp snout on the head, and two eyes are attached to the flexible antennas. They have long tails that help to swim faster.
The outside covering or the exterior of crawfish is thin but quite hard like lobsters. Crawfish have five pairs of legs and five pairs of swimmerets attached to the abdomen. They use them for moving around the water and breathing as well.
The front leg pair is actually two large claws, which are again similar to lobsters. Crawfish also use these claws to defend themselves, hold on to things, attack prey, and eat food. Both lobster and crawfish live at the bottom of the waterbed.
Normally, adult crawfish grow up to be 7.5 cm or 3 inches long. The smallest crawfish can be 2.5 cm such as Cambarellus diminutus living in the U.S.
The largest crawfish are seen in Tasmania, and the species is Astacopsis gouldi. They can become 40 cm long and 8 pounds or 3.5 kg.
Where Can You Find Them?
Crawfish are also known as crayfish and crawdad. In some parts of the U.S.A., it is also known as crawdads, freshwater lobsters, and mudbugs. Crawfish belong to the superfamilies Astacoidea and Parastacoidea.
There are about 500 species of crawfish, and more than half of these species live in North America. Although most of the species live in freshwater, very few of them can live in brackish water or the sea.
Also, 100 species of crawfish are found in Australia, and the world’s largest crawfish live there.
Some species of crawfish live in places where freshwater runs like rivers, streams, and brooks. Then other spices are found living in ditches, swaps, and paddy fields.
They are also farmed in ponds in places like Texas, California and Louisiana.
What Kind of Animal Is A Crawfish?
As crawfish are small crustaceans. They are easy prey for animals of both water and ground. So, they try to hide from their enemies in corners, under logs and rocks.
They come out at night to search for food and feed on insects, snails, worms, and sea plants. They also eat decomposed bodies of water animals like fish.
Crawfish can rarely survive in populated or dirtied water. However, there are some species, like Procambarus clarkii, which are very strong and tolerate unclean water.
What Are Crawfish Classified As?
Crawfish as mentioned before are crustaceans. There are in total 3 families of crawfish. Two of them can be found in the Northern Hemisphere, and another is found in the South.
Crawfish in The Southern Hemisphere belonging to the Parastacidae family, has 14 extant genera. They are found in South America, Australasia, and Madagascar.
The other two families live in western Eurasia, western North America, eastern Asia, and eastern North America.
What Are Crawfish Used For?
Basically the only use crawfish have for us is being tasty. Crawfish are prepared in various ways. They have to be boiled and cooked properly.
It has a tough exterior, so you have to peel off the exterior to get to the soft parts of crawfish, which are edible. In dishes like soups, bisques, and étouffées, only the tail of the crawfish is used.
Check out our complete guide on how to boil crawfish and you be will be impressing all your friends and family with how well your boiled crawfish are at your next crawfish boil.
However, there are many other dishes where the entire body, including the claw meat of crawfish, can be eaten. The eggs of crawfish are also very delicious. Although the eggs are often used in soups or sauce, people can eat them separately.
Crawfish are a great source of protein. They also contain a lot of vitamin B, selenium, and iron. So, overall, crawfish are healthy food, but they can also increase the amount of cholesterol in our body. Therefore, it is better to control the consumption of crawfish.
Besides the shells you can eat and digest almost every part of a crawfish. And even the shells are digestible though they won’t really contribute much to the taste.
You can eat the meat inside of the shell of its body. You can also crack their claws and enjoy the meat inside. You might think about discarding the head but don’t make that mistake. The best flavors of the crawfish are all in there.
You can suck on the head to enjoy all the tasty juices and fats inside. Also, you can you use them to make delicious stock to flavor other dishes.
What’s The Difference Between Crawfish and Crayfish?
There are no differences between crawfish and crayfish. These are the same thing.
These two names are just two different pronunciations of the same name. Crayfish is more of a standard bookish spelling. On the other hand, people from yhe south use the pronunciation Crawfish.
Can Crawfish Survive in Seawater?
Although crawfish look like lobsters, most of the crawfish cannot survive in saltwater. Freshwater crawfish will die a quick but painful death in seawater as the sea has a high concentration of salt.
Fish have to balance the amount of water and salt in their body to survive underwater. This process is known as osmoregulation.
Freshwater fish have a high amount of salt in their body, but freshwater does not contain much salt. On the contrary, saltwater fish do not have much salt in their body, and there is a lot of salt in the seawater.
Like any other freshwater fish, crawfish have salt in their body. Salt attracts water, so a lot of water is absorbed by crawfish.
To get rid of the excess water, the fish have to continuously release the excess water, or else the body will explode.
Now, if you put a crawfish in salty water, the high amount of salt in the sea takes away all the water from the crawfish. The salt in the body of the crawfish is less than the salt of the sea.
Therefore, the body water of the crawfish will be absorbed by the saltwater. As a result, the crawfish will die due to dehydration.
Conclusion
By now, you must have the answer to your question “Are crawfish considered seafood?”
Even though crawfish live in freshwater, they are still aquatic creatures which instantly qualify them as seafood.
Not only that they are basically smaller versions of lobsters which are definitely seafood.