being sufficiently high to pasteurize the shellfish while preventing substantial expansion of the container yet sufficiently low so as to minimize vaporization of internal juices and preventing substantially all of the shellfish meat from becoming mushy thereby maintaining substantially all of the natural juices of the shellfish within the shells and maintaining any inadvertently escaped juices to remain in association with the shellfish from which it originated and within said container said container being suitable for freezing and transport so that both the shellfish and any inadvertent juices remain together during transport application_number US 90123401 A description reference is now made to the figures wherein like parts are designated with like numerals throughout referring first to fig1 the present invention comprises a process for preparing and packaging shellfish for long term storage the process includes placing one or more mussels into an impervious container 10 having at least one opening not shown for introducing live shellfish such as mussels 12 therethrough preferably the opening must be such that it may be thermally sealed i e melted to contain all fluids therein during subsequent heating and pressurizing steps described below in a preferred embodiment of the process live mussels or other shellfish are subjected to shell washing.