Seafood Trivia
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This seafood trivia quiz has 97 free questions with answers and covers everything that comes out of the water and ends up on a plate: lobster and crab, oysters, mussels and scallops, shrimp, squid and sea urchin, plus the great fish dishes of the world, from sushi and ceviche to fish and chips, bouillabaisse and Portugal's salt cod. There are questions on the science of seafood (why lobsters turn red, why oysters make pearls), on food history (who fried the first chips with fish, where the lobster roll was invented) and on the frankly alarming things people eat on purpose, like fermented shark and pufferfish liver. It works for a restaurant trivia night, a seafood boil, a beach party or a pub quiz round. Difficulty runs from easy openers to a handful of expert questions about caviar economics and geoduck lifespans. Every answer has been checked against an encyclopaedic or primary source, and each question carries a citation you can inspect, so if a fact surprises you, you can see exactly where it comes from.
30 of 97 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Lobsters have blue blood because their blood carries oxygen using a compound built around which metal?
Copper
Copper: lobster blood carries oxygen with hemocyanin, a copper-based molecule that turns blue when oxygenated; vertebrates use iron-based hemoglobin, which is why our blood is red.
Q 02The heaviest lobster ever caught, just over 20 kg per Guinness, came from the waters of which Canadian province?
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia: Guinness lists a lobster of just over 20 kg, about 44 lb, caught off Nova Scotia in 1977 as the heaviest on record; lobsters keep growing throughout their lives, so the oldest become giants.
Q 03A cooked lobster turns orange as heat frees astaxanthin, a pigment that also colours which bird's feathers?
Flamingo
Flamingo: flamingos turn pink from astaxanthin and related pigments in the algae and shrimp they eat; in a live lobster a protein binds the pigment and masks it blue-black until heat breaks the bond.
Q 04In colonial New England, lobster was regarded as food for whom?
Servants and the poor
Servants and the poor: lobster was so plentiful on colonial New England's shores that it ranked as poverty food, fed to servants and prisoners; the tale of contracts limiting servants to two lobster meals a week has no evidence behind it.
Q 05Maine made it famous, but the first lobster roll is credited to a restaurant in which state?
Connecticut
Connecticut: Perry's in Milford is credited with the first lobster roll in the 1920s, served hot with butter; the cold roll dressed with mayonnaise is the Maine style.
Q 06Under ideal laboratory conditions a single oyster can filter roughly how much water in a day?
190 litres
190 litres: about 50 US gallons a day at best; Chesapeake Bay's oysters could once filter the whole bay within about a week, a job that would take today's depleted reefs around a year.
Q 07The nucleus placed in an oyster to start a cultured pearl is usually a polished piece of what?
Mussel shell
Mussel shell: the bead nucleus is cut and polished from thick freshwater mussel shell, mostly from American rivers, which the oyster then coats in layers of nacre over the following years.
Q 08Which tetrodotoxin-laden fish may only be prepared in Japanese restaurants by specially licensed chefs?
Pufferfish
Pufferfish: fugu's poison has no known antidote, so Japan lets only licensed chefs prepare it, after at least two years of apprenticeship and a practical exam.
Q 09Serving which prized part of the fugu was banned in Japanese restaurants in 1984?
The liver
The liver: widely held to be the tastiest part and among the most poisonous, it was banned nationally in 1984; kabuki star Bandō Mitsugorō VIII had died in 1975 after eating four servings, claiming he could survive the poison.
Q 10Hanaya Yohei is credited with inventing nigiri sushi around 1824 in which city?
Edo
Edo: nigiri began as the fast food of Edo, today's Tokyo, eaten at street stalls by busy townspeople long before sushi became fine dining.
Q 11In 1958 Yoshiaki Shiraishi opened the first sushi restaurant with what?
Conveyor belts
Conveyor belts: Shiraishi got the idea from watching beer bottles ride the line at an Asahi brewery, then spent years building his own; the format boomed after his chain served at the 1970 Osaka Expo.
Q 12Traditionally, the word caviar refers only to the roe of which fish?
Sturgeon
Sturgeon: under US rules only salted sturgeon eggs may be sold simply as 'caviar', while other eggs must name their fish; yet American bars once gave caviar away free, because its salt made drinkers thirsty.
Q 13Almas, a famously costly caviar from rare albino fish up to a century old, is named for which gem?
Diamond
Q 21Bouillabaisse, the Provençal fish soup, originated in which port city?
Marseille
Marseille: bouillabaisse began as a fishermen's stew of the bony rockfish they couldn't sell; in 1980 eleven of the city's restaurateurs signed a Bouillabaisse Charter fixing its ingredients and method.
Q 22Lutefisk, the Nordic Christmas dish, is dried whitefish that has been cured in what?
Lye
Straight out of the lye the fish has a pH of 11 to 12 and is inedible; days of soaking bring it back.
Q 23The fermented Nordic delicacy hákarl is made from the meat of which animal?
Greenland shark
Greenland shark: hákarl is Greenland shark fermented underground for weeks, then hung to dry for months; fresh, its flesh is toxic from urea and trimethylamine oxide, and Anthony Bourdain called it the worst thing he had ever eaten.
Diamond: almas is Persian for diamond; the paler the eggs, the older the fish and the higher the price, and these come from albino beluga said to be 60 to 100 years old.
Q 14Joseph Malin is usually credited with opening Britain's first fish and chip shop around 1860 in which city?
London
London: Malin, a Jewish immigrant, paired fried fish with chips in the East End around 1860; Lancashire disputes it, crediting John Lees, who sold the pair from a wooden hut in Mossley around 1863.
Q 15During the Second World War, fish and chips held what special status in Britain?
It was never rationed
It was never rationed: the wartime government kept fish and chips off the ration book to protect morale, though queues and shortages were common; Churchill called the pair 'the good companions'.
Q 16Ceviche is recognised by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of which country?
Peru
Peru: UNESCO listed Peruvian ceviche as Intangible Cultural Heritage in December 2023; the citrus juice firms the raw fish and turns it opaque, as if cooked, because its acid denatures the proteins.
Q 17Paella takes its name from the word for what in Catalan and Valencian?
Frying pan
Frying pan: paella is the Valencian and Catalan word for the wide, shallow pan the rice cooks in; the traditional paella valenciana holds no seafood, but rabbit, chicken and green beans.
Q 18Which style of clam chowder is made with a clear broth, using neither milk nor tomatoes?
Rhode Island
Rhode Island: its chowder is a clear clam broth, with neither New England's milk nor Manhattan's tomatoes; the red Manhattan style is itself often credited to Rhode Island's immigrant fishing communities.
Q 19Imitation crab sticks are made from surimi, a paste most often based on which fish?
Alaska pollock
Alaska pollock: most surimi is made from Alaska (walleye) pollock, a cheap, mild white fish whose minced flesh is washed, shaped and coloured to mimic crab; Japan has made fish paste since kamaboko appeared in 1115.
Q 20The five-toothed chewing organ of a sea urchin is named after which ancient philosopher?
Aristotle
Aristotle: the urchin's jaw apparatus is called Aristotle's lantern after his description in Historia Animalium; the 'lantern' probably referred to the whole animal, which resembled the horn lamps of his day.
Q 24Which pungent fermented fish sauce did ancient Romans add to dishes from boiled veal to pear soufflé?
Garum
Garum: Romans fermented the innards of fatty fish in brine for it, and the costliest grade, garum sociorum, was shipped from Cartagena and Cádiz; Seneca sneered at that 'expensive bloody mass of decayed fish'.
Q 25Which small fish is a key ingredient of both Worcestershire sauce and Caesar salad dressing?
Anchovy
Anchovy: Lea & Perrins lists anchovies in its Worcestershire sauce, and Caesar Cardini's own salad used no anchovy fillets, only a dash of that sauce; the fillets were a later addition.
Q 26Which sea snail has an ear-shaped shell with a row of holes and is called pāua in New Zealand?
Abalone
Abalone: New Zealand's pāua has a blue-green iridescent shell lining, which Māori carvers inlay into the faces of their carved figures.
Q 27Which huge burrowing clam of the Pacific Northwest can live for well over a century?
Geoduck
Geoduck: pronounced 'gooey-duck', it is the largest burrowing clam and one of the longest-lived animals, often passing 100 years; adults have few natural predators, which may help explain it.
Q 28In 1983 which US state named the crawfish its official state crustacean?
Louisiana
Louisiana: it named the crawfish its state crustacean in 1983 and by 2018 held over 90% of US crawfish farms, yet most frozen crawfish sold in other states' supermarkets is imported from China.
Q 29The Soviet Union deliberately introduced the red king crab into which sea in the 1960s?
Barents Sea
Barents Sea: Soviet scientists released Pacific red king crabs into the Barents Sea near Murmansk in the 1960s to create a fishery; the crab has since spread along the Norwegian coast as both prized catch and invasive pest.
Q 30In July 1992 Canada declared a moratorium on fishing which species off Newfoundland?
Northern cod
Northern cod: stocks had fallen to about 1% of historic levels when minister John Crosbie closed the fishery, putting tens of thousands out of work; the 'two-year' ban on commercial fishing lasted until 2024.