“What we’re fighting isn’t just a battle about horseshoe crabs. It’s about keeping ecosystems productive,” says Niles, who has spent his career researching the environment and species of Delaware Bay.
Lonza, the Swiss corporation, says it is “committed to protecting the welfare of the horseshoe crab,” for instance by “actively supporting conservation efforts.”
According to the statement from Lonza, Charles River Laboratories and another lysate maker, Associates of Cape Cod, Inc., raise horseshoe crabs in hatcheries and release them into the ocean. Lonza reports that in 2019, the Cape Cod company reintroduced 100,000 juvenile crabs into the waters around Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Lonza’s statement says the company would also prefer to use lysate alternatives and has trademarked its own rFC, called PyroGene. But, as the American Pharmacopeia decision illustrates, “regulatory hurdles remain. We remain hopeful that the barriers preventing drug developers from using the synthetic alternatives are starting to fall,” the statement says.
Disrupting the food chain
Meanwhile, conservationists are monitoring the impact to the species that rely on horseshoe crab eggs as vital food sources.
Sport fish that once were numerous, such as striped bass and flounder, have plummeted in number in the region, in part due to fewer horseshoe crab eggs, Niles says. Diamondback terrapins, a type of reptile that’s vulnerable to extinction, also depend on this seasonal buffet.
Both Niles and Brummer are particularly concerned about migratory shorebirds, such as red knots and ruddy turnstones, which stop at Delaware Bay on their 9,000-mile journey from Tierra del Fuego in Chile to Arctic breeding grounds. These birds need tremendous amounts of energy for their long-distance flights, and calorie-rich horseshoe crab eggs are the perfect fuel. (Read how climate change is shrinking red knots.)
During their two-week sojourn on Delaware Bay, red knots nearly double their body weight to prepare for the final leg of their voyage. This year, however, cool temperatures delayed crab spawning, and only 30,000 red knots stayed in the bay, a drop from an estimated 40,000 birds in 2019.
Niles cautions that a weakening of one link in the food chain can reverberate, with potentially disastrous consequences. The depletion of horseshoe crabs could ultimately eliminate benefits that tourists, fishermen, and others get from enjoying the bay.
“The value of a natural resource,” he says, “doesn't belong to companies that are exploiting it. It belongs to us.”
The Link LonkJuly 06, 2020 at 03:57PM
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Horseshoe crab blood is key to making a COVID-19 vaccine—but the ecosystem may suffer. - National Geographic UK
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