Background Crustaceans are a type of biological resource with significant commercial value in fisheries and aquaculture. In recent years, due to the decline of certain traditional fisheries and the increasing demand for high protein foods, resources of crustaceans such as crabs, lobsters, shrimp, and krill have been extensively developed. Therefore, it is necessary to develop stock assessment and management of crustaceans to maintain their sustainable development. However, for crustaceans, the challenge of determining age hampers the development of accurate stock assessments. At present, there are many methods for identifying the age of crustaceans, mainly including feeding method, marker recapture method, body length frequency method, lipofuscin analytical method, radioisotope method, and hard tissue growth band counting method. In recent years, the hard tissue growth band counting method has gained widespread use and significant attention.

Process  Based on the above background, this article first introduces the biological characteristics and hard tissue structure of crustaceans, describes on the experimental process of using the hard tissue growth band counting method to identify the age of aquatic crustaceans, compares it with other methods for identifying the age of aquatic crustaceans, analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of this method, and reviews the research progress of using hard tissue growth zones to analyze the age and growth of aquatic crustaceans. Perspectives are provided on the future challenges that need to be addressed and the development direction of this method.

Prospect  It is pointed out that in the future work on age determination of aquatic crustaceans, it is necessary to further understand the sedimentation mechanism of growth zones, accurately grasp the counting of hard tissue growth zones, conduct in-depth analysis of the experimental data obtained, and conduct relevant verification experiments.

Significance  This paper may provide a systematic reference for future age determination of aquatic crustaceans.