Shellfish hunters at Ponta do Sousa beach in Maragogipe city, Bahia State, Norteast Brazil. Job done exclusively by women, their work is to pick up cockles that are bellow the mud in the low tide. In most of the northeastern states, shellfish.are important resources and traditionally it is the.women who gather them. The women are called.marisqueiras, from the word marisco (shellfish), a.term that conveys their separate status within the fishing sector. Shellfish is a culinary and fisheries term for exoskeleton-bearing aquatic invertebrates used as food, including various species of molluscs, crustaceans, and echinoderms.