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.

[2] 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.

This has led some authors to propose Pandalus borealis as an efficient natural sampler for assessing molecular fish diversity in Arctic marine ecosystems.

They are born as male, but after approximately two and a half years, their testes turn to ovaries and they complete their lives as females.

[8] Pandalus borealis is an important food resource, and has been widely fished since the early 1900s in Norway, and later in other countries following Johan Hjort's practical discoveries of how to locate them.

[8] However, surface temperatures are continuing to rise yearly off the coast of Maine due to climate change and impacting the region's marine fisheries.

[11] 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.