Northern Shrimp

Pandalus borealis usually lives on a soft muddy bottoms at depths of 20 to 1,330 m (66–4,364 ft), in waters with a temperature of 0 to 8 °C (32–46 °F), although it has been recorded from 9 to 1,450 m (30–4,757 ft) and −2 to 12 °C (28–54 °F). P. borealis thrives in waters where the salinity ranges between 32 and 35 ppt, depending on where the shrimp are at in their life cycle. The distribution of the North Atlantic nominate subspecies P. b. borealis ranges from New England in the United States, Canada's eastern seaboard (off Newfoundland and Labrador and eastern Baffin Island in Nunavut), southern and eastern Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard, Norway and the North Sea as far south as the English Channel. The North Pacific P. b. eous is found from Japan and Korea, through the Sea of Okhotsk, across the Bering Strait, and as far south as the U.S. state of California. Instead of regarding it as a subspecies, the North Pacific population is often recognized as a separate species, P. eous.

Trophic DNA metabarcoding studies show that Pandalus borealis plays a key role in Arctic food webs, by feeding on a diverse array of prey, including gelatinous zooplankton and chaetognaths. High diversity of fish DNA can also be detected in their stomachs, probably as a result of their role as generalized scavengers. This has led some authors to propose Pandalus borealis as an efficient natural sampler for assessing molecular fish diversity in Arctic marine ecosystems.

Beyond human consumption, shrimp alkaline phosphatase (SAP), an enzyme used in molecular biology, is obtained from Pandalus borealis, and the species' carapace is a source of chitosan, a versatile chemical used for such different applications as treating bleeding wounds, filtering wine or improving the soil in organic farming.