(FORTUNE Magazine) – Everyone's familiar with the concept of the gender gap as it relates to politics, wages, and soap opera ratings. But did you know it also applies to seafood?

It's true. Sources throughout the $43 billion seafood industry agree that women purchase and consume more fish than men do. Linda Candler, a spokesperson for the National Fisheries Institute, a trade group, says one reason for this is that "women tend to respond more to seafood's health appeal--they think of it in terms of taking good care of their families." Linda Skinner, managing editor of Seafood Business magazine, gives a similar assessment: "Women tend to be more health conscious, and the industry has been more concerned about getting a message to the female than to the male. I think that's an opportunity that's being missed."

Seafood is hardly the only food product whose demographic profile skews toward the feminine--as Candler points out, women also eat more fruit and more mint-chocolate-chip ice cream than men do. But unlike these other foods, seafood may offer a unique way of connecting with men, and Tim Ryan, senior vice president of the Culinary Institute of America, thinks he knows what it is: appeal to their meat tooth.

"Men are attracted to different terminology than women are," says Ryan. "That's not a new marketing breakthrough, but we can apply it to seafood--we've found that men are attracted to names and descriptors that are more meat-like. A 'salmon steak' just sounds more manly than 'filet of salmon.'"

"Salmon steak" and "swordfish steak" have been in common parlance for years, but Ryan wants to take the concept further. Among the terms he'd like to see employed more often are "swordfish chops," "skate wing ribs," and "roasted loin of cod," the last of which he says "sounds so much more masculine than 'filet of scrod,' even though it's basically the same thing." He also favors the use of guy-friendly cooking terms like roasting, smoking, pan searing, and grilling.

As changes in American lifestyles bring increasing numbers of men into supermarkets, it seems Ryan may well be on to something. Sea Star Seafood, a Massachusetts firm, now sells a line of prepackaged seafood called Prime Cuts. A coupon-insert ad for the brand features a photo of a hefty slab of grilled swordfish cross-hatched with black sear marks. Any self-respecting carnivore would be proud to sink his teeth into it.

Sea Star president James R. Faro says Prime Cuts, which debuted in 1996, wasn't conceived as a gender-targeted product line, although he's happy to reap whatever windfall might result. The brand's meat-evocative name, however, is no accident. "Our approach with Prime Cuts is to present ourselves as a viable protein alternative to meat, poultry, or veal," says Faro. "That's who we compete with--the meat and poultry industries, not other seafood items."

So will we soon be seeing things like shank of red snapper and crown roast of halibut? Maybe, but if so it probably won't be due to any coordinated marketing effort by the seafood industry. The National Fisheries Institute does act as a clearinghouse for more than 1,000 seafood-related businesses, but it lacks a large-scale marketing operation like the ones administered by the Beef Council and the National Pork Producers' Council. "The seafood industry is so diverse, with so many different species, that it's difficult to bring the industry together to market as a group," says Candler, the NFI spokesperson.

There was a bit of progress in this area in the 1980s, when federal funding helped create the National Fish and Seafood Promotional Council; but when the funds expired in 1991, so did the organization.

Too bad, because while the NFI's current slogan, "Seafood: Take it to heart," is a step up from the industry's previous tag line, "Eat fish and seafood twice a week" (which sounds as though it was designed to put men and women to sleep), it definitely doesn't connect on the level of "Pork: the other white meat" or "Beef: It's what's for dinner." But Tim Ryan, still pushing his unique gender agenda, has a suggestion for a new slogan, which he offers at no charge: "Seafood: the other meat."

PAUL LUKAS, author of Inconspicuous Consumption, obsesses over the details of consumer culture so you don't have to.