In this study, the effectiveness of lala clam (Orbicularia orbiculata) shell, a fishery waste, as an adsorbent for removal of Cd(II), Cu(II) and Pb(II) ions from contaminated water was eval-uated by characterization and adsorption studies. The characterization study was performed using Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM), Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX) Spectroscopy and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) Spectroscopy techniques. The effects of solution pH (pH 1.0 to 6.0), adsorbent dosage (0.125 to 0.750g) and initial adsorbate con-centration (10 to 200 mg/L) on adsorption capacity of lala clam shell were studied. The cap-ability of lala clam shell to remove metal ions from aqueous solution was assessed in both single-and mix-metal systems. The adsorption equilibrium data were fitted to Freundlich and Langmuir isotherm models. At an optimum solution pH of 6.0 and initial metal ion con-centration of 200mg/L, the maximum adsorption capacity (Qmax) values of Cd(II), Cu(II) and Pb(II) ions were determined as 66.66, 64.94 and 100.00 mg/g, respectively. The removal per-formance of lala clam shell (63.80 to 93.79%) for metal ions from battery manufacturing wastewater was comparable to that of three commercial activated carbons derived from olive tree wood (73.01 to 94.83%), coconut shell (68.10 to 95.17%) and bamboo (69.33 to 94.48%), which are commonly used for water treatment in Libya, Malaysia and Indonesia, respectively. The results obtained from this study suggest that lala clam shell exhibits a great potential to be used as an effective alternative to expensive adsorbents for water treatment.