July 11, 2016 — LITTLE COMPTON, R.I. — Cooking a channeled whelk is not for the squeamish. But sliced and sprinkled over a bed of linguine, it’s a chewy delicacy in old-fashioned Italian eateries along the East Coast.
The sea snails known by Italian-Americans as scungilli used to be such a niche market that fishermen ignored them when they turned up in lobster traps or oyster dredges.
Now they’re a prized commodity. Because of growing demand in Asia and the collapse of other industries, such as lobster, fishermen searching for something else to catch are keeping and selling the big marine snails.
“There’s an international market for the product, primarily in Hong Kong and South China,” said Rick Robins, who owns Bernie’s Conchs in Virginia and manages export sales for Chesapeake Bay Packing. “It’s a popular item in Cantonese cooking.”
Most people who order a plate of scungilli probably haven’t seen one of the hairy-shelled gastropods in the wild. A voracious predator, it crawls along the bottom of Atlantic coastal inlets from Nantucket Sound to North Carolina’s Outer Banks, piercing its razor-edged proboscis into clams and other prey.