The demand for proteins is rising with increasing awareness of their health benefits, which has resulted in search for proteins from alternate sources. The processing of food all over the world results in tremendous amounts of waste. There is much scope for secondary processing of food waste for the recovery of proteins. Current total fish production is around 170 million tones, 90% of which is used for human consumption. Commercial processing of seafood results in enormous amounts of solid discards, offal or by-products. These discards, on dry weight basis, contain up to 60% proteins, consisting mostly of myofibrillar proteins, collagen, enzymes, and also soluble nitrogenous compounds. The proteins in the discards have valuable biochemical, nutritional as well as functional properties. In addition, these proteins are also sources of bioactive peptides associated with diverse functions. In view of these properties, seafood discards offer valuable resources for interesting nutritional and health applications. Efforts in this direction will help better utilization of harvested and farmed seafood besides significantly reducing seafood-associated environmental problems. Iso-electric pH solubilization precipitation is a plausible and gentle method for the recovery of proteins from fishery discards. The recovered proteins are comparable with conventional surimi in gel forming and other functional properties. Other approaches for protein recovery include mechanical deboning of fish frames, development of weak acid-induced gels, protein dispersions, and treatment of the discards by proteolytic enzymes. This presentation will discuss recovery of proteins from seafood processing discards and their uses as food additives and nutraceuticals
