ABSTRACT
The quality and safety of seafood, understood here in terms of the nutritive/dietary, organoleptic, hygienic, and technological status of sh and shell sh at the time of capture/harvest are shaped by environmental (abiotic and biotic) factors that in uence the internal (genetic, physiological, and immunological) characteristics of organisms being used in seafood manufacture. Abiotic factors, such as water temperature, salinity, contents of dissolved oxygen (DO), and biogenic compounds, affect the distribution and relative abundance of sh and shell sh (e.g., Neill et al. 1994). Fry (1972) divided the environmental factors into those that are: physiological effects-controlling (which decide on the metabolic rates), limiting (which constrain maximum metabolism), lethal (which inhibit metabolism), masking (which increase obligatory metabolic activity), and directive (which release and unload metabolism by controlling responses to external in uences). It may be said that the environment operates on individuals through metabolism, on populations through recruitment, and on communities/ecosystems through abiotic and biotic diversi cation (Neill et al. 1994).
