What is Crustacean Waste?

Crustaceans and mollusks are the second and third most traded aquatic animal products, with the majority of their supply coming from aquaculture production. In 2022, global production of farmed crustaceans and mollusks reached 1.6 million and 1 million tons, respectively. Consumption of finfish has decreased worldwide, while a shift in favour of shellfish such as mollusks and crustaceans has been observed. Shellfish accounted for 26 percent of animal food consumption in 2021, up from only 14% in 1961 (FAO, 2024). This increased consumption results in a considerable amount of by-products, since only 30-40% of the shellfish biomass is edible meat. These by-products generated by modern seafood processing practices include shrimp and crab exoskeletons, and oyster, mussel, and scallop shells left after consumption (Islam et al., 2021; Yadav et al., 2019). Annually, the shellfish processing industry produces 8 million tons of crustacean waste in the form of shrimp, crab, and lobster exoskeletons (Yan & Chen, 2015) and 10 million tons of mussels, clams, scallops, and oyster shells (Summa et al., 2022). In the Philippines alone, an estimated 250,000 metric tons of seafood waste is generated annually (Cadano et al., 2021), creating challenges in waste management, including waste collection, utilization, and disposal. In fact, waste management is one of the identified problems in the Philippine blue swimming crab (BSC), Portunus pelagicus, industry, particularly in crab picking stations where BSC is pre-processed to produce preserved crab meat (Yap et al., 2020). One fishery company in the Philippines (i.e., REL Seafoods) gathers 15,700 to 22,400 kg of BSC per month during the amihan (northeast monsoon) and habagat (southwest monsoon) seasons. Such fishery produces up to 12,880 kgs of crab exoskeleton waste per month (Lim et al., 2021). Such a large volume of shellfish waste presents a continuous source of raw material to produce high-value compounds for pharmaceutical and food applications (Popovic et al., 2023).