Stonington Red Shrimp

Loved by Connecticut ’s Chefs, Stonington Reds are a delicate, sweet, buttery shrimp coveted by culinarians.

By Andrea E. McHugh | Photography by Catherine Dzilenski, Lisa Nichols
© 2025 Edible CT East

It’s not a vast fleet you’ll find 100 miles southeast of Stonington on the continental shelf, trawling the seabed at depths up to 2,700 feet for one of the most elusive crustacean species. Instead, it’s just one or just a handful of boats. But the fishermen behind the wheel know their work reaps, quite literally, the sweetest reward.

“They were actually looking for a different species of shrimp called Scarlet Shrimp, and they didn’t find those, but they found the Royal Red,” recalls Nancy Balcom, who has served as the associate director and extension program leader for the University of Connecticut Sea Grant College Program since 1985. “The grant allowed them to put real deep sea nets and miles and miles of line on their boat without having to pay for it; covering the cost of going out and blowing diesel to go exploring in areas where they didn’t normally.”

Stonington’s Royal Red Shrimp, or colloquially, Stonington Reds, were uncovered in the cold deep blue of the Northeast Atlantic just 30 years ago. Funded by a National Marine Fisheries Service grant to unearth lesser-known species, the late William Bomster, a Connecticut native and longtime Stonington-based scalloper, brought to the surface the Pleoticus Robustus — plump, robust, “royal red” shrimp that lurk deep in the fathoms where temperatures linger at 50 degrees or cooler.

The limited number of boats fishing them and the 12-hour journey it takes to reach their fertile grounds combined with their extraordinary sweet, buttery flavor make Stonington Reds a delicacy…