Abstract:Antarctic krill as the dominant prey in the Southern Ocean has astonishing standing biomass. As a new source of chitosan, the unpolluted environment and the huge biomass stock would improve the quality of chitosan for biomedical application. In this study, Antarctic krill shrimp shells were used to extract chitosan by chemical method. The reacting condition in decalcification, deproteinization and deacetylation was optimized. The prepared chitosan extracted from Antarctic krill showed bright white powder, and the degree of deacetylationreached to 90.6%, with the molecular weight around 123 kDa and ash content around 0.095%. In hemostasis evaluation, Antarctic krill chitosan showed significantly superior hemostatic effect to other sources of commercialized chitosan, indicating its great prospects for hemostatic application.