Exploitation of Marine Waste for Value-Added Products Synthesis

Abstract

Oceanic animals such as fish, crabs, oysters, shrimps, and snails are one of the most nutritious, abundantly available sources in nature which have led to a tremendous increase in the global demand of these animals. Nevertheless, most of the non-consumable parts such as head, skin, trimmings, fins, bones, viscera, shells as well as roe are discarded into deep ocean and harbor which leads to increase in the land and water pollution. This low value-added marine waste can be exploited for the isolation of high value-added products such as proteins, peptides, and polymers on commercial scale level in agriculture, pharmaceutical, and cosmetics sectors. The fish consumption studies have revealed that since 1961–2013, there was a significant increase (3.2%) at an average annual rate for fish food supply. Moreover, fishing industries generate massive waste materials which have been exceeded to almost 20 million tons, comparable to 25% of total marine species caught. In this chapter, the main focus is to investigate fish waste sources which are being used to generate various high value-added products such as bioactive peptides, chitin, chitosan, gelatin, collagen, and polymeric sulfates. We found that marine waste-derived polymers and peptides due to their low molecular weight had the ability to pass through the cells easily and showed an outstanding wound healing and tissue regeneration capabilities at the targeted site when used in therapeutics studies. Moreover, these extracted products also showed low toxicity, high activity, high biodegradability, and biocompatibility as compared to chemical-based products and henceforth can be used in food and pharmaceutical sectors.