Modem large and fast ocean fishing vessels include mechanical refrigeration, but all of them consume precious fuel or electricity to achieve refrigeration. Fishing vessels with tonnage at about 100 tons cannot attach compressor-icemaker onboard because of their small horsepower of diesel engine. These vessels always have to carry a lot of ice for caught fish preservation. At the same time, waste heat dissipated in the hot exhaust gases in most of the fishing vessels is rejected to the atmosphere. At present, some effort has been devoted to the utilization of the vast amount of the waste energy for refrigeration. In this paper, several types of refrigeration technology in fishing vessels are introduced, such as vapor-compression refrigeration systems, heat recovery systems to power absorption refrigeration plant, adsorption systems for producing chilled water, and adsorption icemaker systems, especially an adsorption icemaker prototype in our laboratory. The better perspectives of applications for the lattermost exist in fishing vessels. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.