Carotenoids are lipophilic compounds and their production is one of the most challenging, yet rewarding, activities in algal biotechnology. Some carotenoids (fucoxanthin included) have antioxidant activity and many studies have confirmed their health benefits. Fucoxanthin is considered as one of the most important intracellular active metabolites present in brown macroalgae. In this work, aqueous solutions of different surface-active ionic liquids and anionic surfactants were evaluated for the carotenoids extraction. Aqueous solutions of sodium dodecyl sulfate were selected as the media with the best extractive performance. For the best solvent, the solid-liquid ratio, concentration, and time of extraction were the conditions optimized and the maximum yield of extraction of carotenoids attained found to be between 2.57 +/- 0.26 mg(carotenoids)/g(dried) mass and 3.31 +/- 0.02 g M mg(carotenoids)/g(dried) mass, depending of the algae batch used. This said, this work proposed an efficient water-based process of carotenoids extraction, for both dried (more 37.4% of carotenoids extracted) and wet (more 30.2% of carotenoids extracted) biomass matrices. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.