So I also had this issue happen. I didn’t bother posting during the interaction bug as there was a lot of information readily available.
I’m on PS4 (single player. There are so many glitchy bugs in multi right now as well but I’m not here to get into that) and had decided to start from scratch.
I was pretty hyped about a super loaded cargo ship nearby on beginner island but knew I would have to fight a shark to get to it so spent the first day stripping the island of everything I could harvest and set up a rudimentary base. (A campfire, a tent, a water still) and made individual neat piles for resources.
This said, the entire time I never noticed a crab or any item that vanished or dropped off the map. Everything felt smooth and nice. Anywho, I stayed up all night in game clearing the resources available and as soon as the water cleared up from its early morning rusty state, I saved and prepped for taking on the shark.
The only thing even close to odd I found was that sharks seem to want to disengage for long periods of time at random. To the point where the “shark music” will play maybe two notes of its tune and then abruptly end… repeatedly. The shark then takes off to who knows where for a long time with or without spears in it. Oh! Also noticed a kind of… muddled audio glitch that forced me to reset my game close to the first save. Like multiple tracks and sound effects were layering on eachother. Hard to explain.
Anyways… after baiting the tiger shark out for a full daytime cycle, I finally buried enough spears in it to kill it. My aim was terrible and I lost 3-4 spears in the ocean. I took it to land, removed my spears from it and the sun set. I decided to wait a short bit in camp and take care of my needs (I ate a ration cause I didn’t do fishing like I had planned cause the Tiger Shark was being a bit odd) and then decided to sleep.
Shortly after I slept, I went to save. The game hung and stayed that way for a while… eventually the “game saved” came up and I was still stuck. I started mashing buttons and found that I had very limited control of my hands but zero control of my character (camera & movement) forcing me to force close the game.
Upon reload, I am now stuck in the “Cleaning up” phase of the load of the save. I have rebooted whilst clearing the cache and loaded it once more to see if the “Cleaning up” eventually progresses. I have been on this screen for over 30 minutes and unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case. Just to confirm, this was the second save attempt on the game file… and I had already preloaded a couple favourite islands in cartographer onto the map but had yet to visit them.
Thanks for the hard work you are putting in. I know this was not the most informative but maybe it will help even a bit.