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A horseshoe crab at Jennings Beach in Fairfield earlier this year.
Photo: Brian A. Pounds / Hearst Connecticut MediaA horseshoe crab at Jennings Beach in Fairfield earlier this year.
A horseshoe crab at Jennings Beach in Fairfield earlier this year.
A horseshoe crab at Jennings Beach in Fairfield earlier this year.
Seeing horseshoe crabs being hauled into a tugboat during a recent field trip sparked my passion for marine conservation. With the mass pollution of Earth’s waters along with the overexploitation of sea creatures living within aquatic ecosystems, we need to focus more attention on environmental legislation to protect our waters and endangered species. In the case of the horseshoe crabs, they face being overharvested for medical research and threaten to disrupt the balance of the ecological food chain if we don’t protect them.
The American horseshoe crabs, who share some similarities with modern day crabs, have existed for at least 445 million years. The crabs live along the Atlantic coast from northern Maine to the Yucatan Peninsula and can live to be as old as 20.
So what are horseshoe crabs most notable for? Horseshoe crabs are most well known for being harvested for medical and physiological research, as well as bait in for the commercial fishing of eels and conch. Horseshoe crab blood has a bluish tint when exposed to oxygen because of the copper found in the blood and also contains a clotting agent called limulus amoebocyte lysate, or LAL. A distinct quality of LAL is that it clots when it touches bacterial toxins. Due to this unique trait, many pharmaceutical companies test drugs, vaccines, prosthetics and other medical devices with LAL to certify their sterility. Presently, there is no FDA-approved artificial replacement for the LAL test.
Why are horseshoe crabs important to ecology? Horseshoe crabs deliver hundreds of thousands of eggs during spawning. Only a small fraction of these eggs reach reproductive maturity, but these eggs also provide useful nutrition to species such as the red knot and the Atlantic loggerhead turtle, along these species’ migratory passages. If we reach a point where the species populations become so small that they no longer serve a significant purpose in local ecology, we may see a collapse.
What is the reason for the horseshoe crab population decline? A list of threats facing horseshoe crabs includes breeding habitat fragmentation due to coastal development and harvesting, climate change, shifting predator populations, substandard water quality, rising competition with invasive species, and human harvest for medical experimentation. As mentioned, horseshoe crabs have also long been used as bait in the eel and whelk fisheries along the East Coast.
How do we defend the future of horseshoe crabs? Connecticut and New York need to take immediate actions such as lowering annual harvest quotas, condensing the harvesting season, halting harvesting during spawning season or stopping horseshoe crab harvest completely. Save the Sound has also proposed limiting the harvest for the new and full moon periods during the two-month spawning season in Long Island Sound.
Additionally, the Connecticut Audubon Society is asking state officials to ban the harvest of horseshoe crabs in Connecticut and to expand law enforcement efforts to stifle illegal horseshoe crab harvesting. Over the past 18 years, the number of horseshoe crabs harvested in Connecticut has ranged from 12,175 to a high of 32,535. Connecticut citizens can aid the efforts of horseshoe crab conservationists by telling local and state government officials that they support the protection of the crabs. We must take action now to protect his important species.
Ella Ip is studying at the Hopkins School in New Haven.
The Link LonkDecember 09, 2020 at 10:37PM
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Opinion: Horseshoe crab conservation is vital - The Hour - Thehour.com
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