This fall a Horseshoe Crab Protection Act will land on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk, a bill that would ban harvesting these ancient creatures in New York. Prohibiting their harvest, rather than merely setting quotas, is vital to safeguard a species whose extinction would have far-reaching implications.
As an observer and researcher of wildlife on Long Island for seven years, I have come across serpentine tracks in the sand that mark the slow, solemn mating rite of the horseshoe crab. My granddaughter and I have found papery shells that the young cast off and stood mesmerized by a crab on its back, gliding its legs in the air, sensing in ways we will never know.
But this mysterious creature is more than just one of nature’s oddities. It is what’s known as a keystone species, supporting scores of other species through vast, invisible networks on which humans rely. Striped bass, weakfish, flounder, blue crabs, perch, killifish, and kingfish all feed on horseshoe crab eggs and larvae, sustaining an ecosystem and the commercial fisheries that thrive on it.
For the federally endangered red knot, a shorebird migrating from the Arctic to the southern tip of South America, refueling on fatty horseshoe crab eggs is crucial. Imperiled loggerhead turtles prey on these creatures. Snails, barnacles, sponges, sand shrimp, mussels, and slipper shells live symbiotically with the horseshoe crabs, latching on to their shells for shelter and transportation as they find food.
For the last 50 years, though, the horseshoe crab has faced a far more formidable predator: us. Persistent harvesting of the crabs for biomedical use and for bait has sent populations spiraling downward, along with development, dredging, and pollution. Commercial harvests spiked in the 1990s with 2.5 million taken in 1998; along the East Coast, horseshoe crab populations crashed (as did the red knots’ concurrently) and have not recovered.
There is no doubt that biomedicine has greatly benefited from harvesting. The blue blood of the horseshoe crab contains amebocyte lysate, which can detect any trace of bacteria, engulf, and neutralize it. Pharmaceutical companies on the East Coast capture live horseshoe crabs, puncture their hearts, hang them from metal bars, and drain about 30 to 50 percent of the blood for use in testing new drugs for contaminants. They claim most crabs do just fine when released, but skeptics, including biologists at the Horseshoe Crab Recovery Coalition, point out the impossibility of tracking these individuals. Even if the crabs survive, they might be too weakened to spawn. Scientists at the Center for Biological Diversity assert that 30 percent die, adding that the estimate is likely higher considering undocumented stress from handling and lack of water.
Decades ago scientists developed a synthetic replacement for amebocyte lysate, which has proved effective and less variable than horseshoe crab blood. Still, the biomedical industry has been slow to convert. U.S. Pharmacopeia, a nonprofit that sets quality standards on medicines, took years to sign off on the synthetic, while regulations by the Food and Drug Administration presented costly hurdles. The harvest of live crabs grew especially voracious in the race to create Covid vaccines, and it continues, with about a million crabs bled annually on the East Coast. The government offers no incentives to biomedical companies to transition, so they carry on, despite the blatant moral imperative to stop.
More disturbing is the use of crabs as bait for whelk and eels, only a fraction of which land on dinner plates in New York while the majority are shipped to Europe and Asia. Although universities have been trying to develop an alternative for years, Jenn Hartnagel, a conservationist at the Group for the East End, reports, “Fishermen will tell you nothing works better than chopped up horseshoe crab. It’s the scent.”
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, a government agency charged with assessing horseshoe crab status every 10 years, coordinates data with the New York Department of Environmental Conservation to set guidelines. But here no one can agree on population numbers, given all the insufficient data on spawning, poaching, and species loss due to widespread trawling. In conjunction with the Fisheries Commission, the D.E.C. set the quota for bait harvest at 150,000 for 2025 with mandatory self-reporting by about a hundred licensed commercial fishermen. They conceded to four brief lunar closures during spawning; but these steps are a “drop in the bucket,” remarks Hartnagel. Bottom line, they can take 150,000 crabs, even as neighboring Connecticut has enacted a total ban on harvesting horseshoe crabs. Meanwhile, New York stands by and quibbles.
It’s absurd that in a shared estuary, Long Island Sound, two diametrically opposed regulations occur. On a practical level, it invites illegal harvests. As David Ansel, vice president of water protection at Save the Sound, revealed at a State Assembly public hearing on Jan. 29, “We certainly wonder if fishermen in Connecticut are now incentivized to come to Long Island to harvest crabs, which is not legal, but also very hard to police.” Poaching is just one of many loopholes in the D.E.C.’s horseshoe crab quota.
Last year the Horseshoe Crab Recovery Coalition, comprising more than 50 national and state conservation groups and health care organizations, proposed a ban on all harvesting in New York. With enormous public support unusual for this sort of issue, both houses of the State Legislature passed the Horseshoe Crab Protection Act by wide margins. High hopes and expectations crashed a few months later when Governor Hochul vetoed the bill.
Critics argue that the governor caved to the fishing industry. The fact is harvesting horseshoe crabs in New York generates only $1.2 million annually. Why can’t the state compensate the fishermen for lost revenue to save a vulnerable keystone species? In her misguided veto letter, Hochul wrote, “This bill could have unintended consequences on the management of other species such as whelk and eel. . . .” How ironic her reaction is. In April the D.E.C. completed its Wildlife Action Plan and suggested the American eel be listed “as a species of greatest conservation need,” the very animals that fishermen are catching with horseshoe crabs. At the Jan. 29 hearing, Larry Niles, a biologist and co-founder of the Recovery Coalition, said whelk generally are in trouble, too.
Destroying any keystone species — horseshoe crabs, gray wolves, ivory tree coral, prairie dogs — is like bulldozing the essential network of fungi that nourishes trees, severing their communication and blocking their aid to one another. Real conservation means not just focusing on the plight of a single species but on the ecosystem in which it lives, supports others, and is supported. Real conservation sees humans as components, not masters, of these ecosystems.
When the new Horseshoe Crab Protection Act, very similar to the last, hits Governor Hochul’s desk in the fall, she should look past a disastrous short-term fix toward a comprehensive sustainability plan for horseshoe crabs and the animals — including humans — who depend on them.
Caroline Sutton is the author of “Eyes in the Soles of My Feet: From Horseshoe Crabs to Sycamores, Exploring Hidden Connections to the Natural World,” due out in October. She lives in East Hampton.