The first horseshoe crab I ever saw was when a woman pulled a massive one out of the Rockaway surf by its tail when I was about seven years old. It scared the seaweed right out of me. A crowd had gathered around to see this monster. My father pushed me further and further into the crowd so I could get a better look. “Heck, Dad! That’s not the direction I want to go! I remember the woman finally picking it up by its tail again and releasing it back into the surf. I watched as its tail left a trail in the sandy wash until a big wave hit and then it was gone. My father went back to swim, and I just sat on my dry towel in the sand. I swore I would never go back in the water again. I feared I would lift my foot and impale it on its spear tail. More about that later.
Over the years I have come to revere these docile creatures. It doesn’t bother me at all that they’re misnamed as “Crabs”. They are actually cousins of spiders and scorpions which are called “Arachnids”. Fortunately, when I found that out, I felt a lot better having never feared spiders. Spiders are good for our dry land environment, so I was sure horseshoe crabs must be doing something good underwater. Their earliest cousins go back 400 million years and the modern version we have now only goes back 250 million years. That makes horseshoe crabs one of the oldest living species on earth. They were around in the Triassic Period. They predate dinosaurs but if you’ve seen any of the “Jurassic Park” movies-You get the type of creatures running all over the place about 90 million years of the time they’ve been here. Let’s just leave it like this -They lived a very long time ago, dinosaurs are gone, they are not here and if we are not careful, horseshoe crabs may not be around long after us.
Why have they survived so long? Quite frankly, I have no idea. Maybe you don’t either. I’ll look it up so we can both sound smart if we’re asked. Ah! Here it is! Found it! Right on www.horseshoescrabshaverights.com. It seems that Horseshoe crabs never made a lot of enemies in the oceans and bays. They aren’t wise guys like bluefish or sharks. Horseshoe crabs just mind their own business and leisurely do their own thing. The feistiest they ever get is when they mate in May and June and lay their eggs at the top of the tide line. Native Americans loved to eat these eggs and considered them a delicacy. It should be noted that if these billions of eggs were not generated, many seabird populations would be devastated since those eggs are a major food source. That’s the way our world is supposed to work. Everything is connected in nature. It’s a big circle of life but we humans keep trying to turn it into a square. Generally, the babies hatch four weeks later when the moon tide hits. Other than their love lives, an adult horseshoe crab’s life is boring and non-aggressive. Even that ghastly spike that kept me on the beach in Rockaway so many years ago, heck it’s not even a weapon! It’s used to right themselves should they get flipped over on their backs exposing their more vulnerable undersides. They have very little edible meat on them, so predators don’t bother them, and I have never seen Horseshoe Crab Cakes or McHorseshoe Burgers on any menu. Their only basic enemies are humans and pollution, though you might say they’re one and the same.
Their next survival asset is their body shape. It’s low to the sea bottom. Unobtrusive. The horseshoe crab shape is dynamically designed to glide over the bottom whether it is of sand or pebble. They can easily maneuver around bigger boulders. Their eyes are positioned so they can see to the front and side. Underneath their upper body shell are ten legs with pincers to grab and move their bodies along like a tank. Their breathing “Lungs” are exposed underneath the rear of their legs. Their entire design both looks and performs like an extraterrestrial spaceship.
The last major advantage they have for long-term survival is their eating habits. They tend to stay on a low-fat diet. They don’t use a lot of butter, cream, animal fats, or bleached flour bread. They should cut down on salt intake a bit, but that’s hard to control given the environment they live in. Their mouths have two very small pincers to grab food.Their menu consists mainly of worms, small shellfish, balanced with large amounts of greens in the form of seaweed and algae. It’s a diet that’s not to my taste, but hey, when you come from Sicily-you eat spaghetti don’t you?
Now let’s get more serious. Horseshoe crabs are an extremely valuable resource to the health of our maritime environment and our own physical well-being. I know you get tired of constantly hearing the environmental card being played, but, in this case, it is warranted. If you value your and your children’s health, you will make sure to take horseshoe crabs’ survival very seriously. Why? Because horseshoe crabs may save a loved one’s life. It happens every day in hospitals across America and beyond. Their blood is bright blue, and it is the apex standard to be safely used to make injectable vaccines and many other medical uses like helping to identify bacterial contaminates in our bodies when we are sick. Horseshoe crabs were also big players in the success of our Covid vaccines. This unique blue blood is also a major contributor to the fight against many types of cancer and is even used to stop clotting in heart valve replacements. The contribution to medicine is so important that medical and marine scientists are working hand in hand to guarantee the horseshoe crabs’ survival.
In the last few decades, their numbers have been dropping substantially. At their current biomass, they are listed as a “Vulnerable” species. Scientists say that horseshoe crabs can sustain themselves at this level but, by a narrow margin. They live and breed up and down the Atlantic Coast with the former center of breeding in Delaware and New Jersey. There has always been a healthy population on Long Island. But even here the numbers are sliding.
Currently, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is studying the threats to the horseshoe crab population, shoreline development and habitat loss, pollution, biological and environmental impact, and socioeconomic impact of the horseshoe crab. Meanwhile, individual Atlantic states are beginning to control the harvesting of these unique creatures. Let’s hope they get it right so horseshoe crabs will be around another 250 million years and when you jump off your boat and see a horseshoe crab scurry away from your feet, think of what a unique, beautiful, and lifesaving member of the sea world it is.
I can’t leave without mentioning the importance of the horseshoe crab to the baymen who work our waters for a living. Baymen use horseshoe crabs as bait for the eels and conch fishery. They also supply part of their catches of horseshoe crabs to medical facilities. The baymen have been using horseshoe crabs as bait since colonial times. The number of baymen working today is a tiny fraction of what there were a half-century ago. I say leave them alone to make their livings. The real culprit is obviously pollution runoff into our bays. All the roads eventually bleed their filth and garbage, unfiltered into the bay. You don’t have to be a scientist and take 10 years of studies to know that to save these bays and the horseshoe crab we must build plants to decontaminate street runoff water or bulldoze all the overdevelopment and turn that back to farms and wetlands. One way or another we must clean up our act, so the horseshoe crab remains a vital part of our bays, our lives, and our health.
Copyright 2023 By Mark C. Nuccio
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