From Dock to Door: Our Unwavering Commitment to Quality

From Dock to Door: Our Unwavering Commitment to Quality

At Intershell Seafood, we're dedicated to providing you with the highest quality, all-natural seafood. Our promise is simple: to offer and supply fresh and frozen seafood without the use of chemicals or preservatives. We believe in maintaining the natural integrity of the product from the moment it lands on the dock to the moment it's delivered to you.

When you purchase from us, you're not only getting delicious, all-natural seafood, but you're also supporting the local harvesters and the Gloucester fishing community. We source and buy direct from these local fishermen, giving us complete control over our products, competitive pricing, and consistent inventory.

What "Processing" Means

In a business context, particularly for a food company like us, "processing" refers to the series of activities or tasks that transform a raw material into a final product. It is a broad term that can encompass a wide range of actions. For Intershell Seafood, this means any action that takes a raw, natural ingredient—like a whole fish or a live clam—and prepares it for the customer. This can include:

  • Minimally altering the food: Actions like washing, cutting, filleting, and packaging.
  • Preparing for preservation: Freezing, which helps maintain freshness and extends shelf life without the use of chemicals.
  • Creating new products: Shucking shellfish, picking meat from lobsters and crabs, or using clams and clam juice to make ready-to-eat items like clam pies.

We want to be clear: processed food items do not equal chemicals. While some companies choose to use additives during processing, we believe in keeping the natural integrity of our seafood.

You can truly taste the difference when seafood is 100% natural and chemical-free.  Here's a list of all the seafood we process in our facility. Some items we handle daily, while others are processed intermittently, seasonally, or have been discontinued.

Surf Clams

Our surf clams are hand-shucked, and we make sure to utilize every part of the meat. After a four-step washing process to remove all sand and grit, we separate the different clam muscles. We create several products from these clams:

  • Chopped Clams: The mantle and abductor muscles are minced and chopped.
  • Sliced Clams: The foot (or "tongue") of the clam is sliced into thin strips.
  • Pasteurized Clam Juice: We extract delicious juice by rendering the clam bellies for 24 hours before pasteurizing
  • Clam Pie & Stuffed Clams: Our stuffed clams and clam pies are made with a simple, time-honored family recipe. We focus on the pure, unadulterated flavor of the sea, using a high concentration of surf clams and our clam juice.
  • Bait: We sell the clam bellies and clam meat as bait to local fishermen.

Frying Clams

These clams are a labor of love. Brought in daily by local clammers from Gloucester, Essex, and Ipswich Bay, our steamers are blanched for one minute to loosen the muscles and then hand-shucked. They're cleaned in saltwater, rinsed of all grit, separated by size, and then packaged fresh or frozen.

Scallops

We hand-shuck our scallops in-house using live scallops from our own boats. We offer both fresh scallop meat and scallop ½ shells.

Oyster Meat

We purchase large oysters, use a mini saw to sever the shell, and then hand-shuck them. The meat is packaged in 1-pound containers and frozen.

All Fish Species

We land a wide variety of fish local to Gloucester and the entire East Coast. We sell many of our fish whole, but we also offer filleting, portioning, and whole fish cleaning services.

  • Filleting: We fillet whole fish, with the skin on or off and de-bone it.
  • Portioning: Our automatic portioning machine can cut any fish species to your desired size.
  • Whole Fish Cleaning: We offer scaling and gutting services for your convenience.

Lobster

Proccessing lobster is one of the most complex and labor-intensive processes we do. We utilize all parts of the lobster to create a variety of wholesale products:

  • Lobster Meat: The tails, claws, and knuckles are cooked, chilled, and then hand-shucked.
  • Lobster Bodies: The bodies are frozen raw and sold as a bulk wholesale product.
  • Lobster Roe: We extract the roe when separating the tails and freeze it in 1-pound units.

Jonah Crab

Picking Jonah crab is a rare and niche service that few companies offer due to the high labor costs involved. Most crab meat on the market is pasteurized or canned, but we offer a truly fresh product.

  • Fresh & Frozen Jonah Crab Meat: Live Jonah crabs are cooked whole, and their legs, claws, and knuckles are meticulously hand-picked with shucking tools and hammers. We carefully extract the meat, ensuring no shells or cartilage pieces get mixed in.

Mollusks: Conch Meat

We primarily sell live conch. However, when we have a surplus, we process the conch to extract the meat and freeze it. This happens just a couple of times a year.

Monkfish Liver (Ankimo)

Intershell is a leading buyer and distributor of Monkfish Liver in the USA. Once considered "trash," this delicacy, known as "Ankimo" in Japan, has been revered for centuries. We sell the liver raw in its natural state, but we also cook it Japanese-style for those who want to avoid the time-consuming cleaning process.

Food Grade Cleaned Shells

The best and nicest-looking shells from scallops, quahogs, and surf clams are saved and soaked in a solution that disintegrates all meat. This leaves a sanitized and perfectly cleaned, food-grade shell.