Gathering seafood by hand can be as easily as picking shellfish or kelp up off the beach, or doing some digging for clams or crabs, or perhaps diving under the water for abalone or lobsters.

Shellfish can be collected from intertidal areas using a spade or rake and put through a sieve to extract the ones of marketable size.

Seafood can be found in coastal zones as well as rivers and lakes around the world. Seafood suitable for gathering by hand includes aquatic invertebrates such as molluscs, crustaceans, and echinoderms as well as aquatic plants. Some molluscs (shellfish) commonly gathered are oysters, clams, scallops and cockles. Some crustaceans commonly gathered are lobster, crayfish, and crabs. A common plant gathered is kelp. Echinoderms are not gathered as much as mollusks and crustaceans. In Asia, sea cucumber and sea urchins are gathered. In parts of the United States, mainly the South, catfish, primarily of the flathead species, are occasionally caught by hand in a technique most often known as noodling.