Horseshoe crabs mating.
Edited from a ecoRI News article by Frank Carini
“Ancient creatures with 12 legs, 10 eyes, and blue blood were once so prevalent on southern New England beaches that people, including children, were paid to kill them.
“Their helmet-like bodies can still be seen along the region’s coastline and around its salt marshes, but in a fraction of the numbers witnessed seven decades ago. There are several reasons why.
“In the 1950s coastal New England paid fishermen and others bounties to kill the up to 2-feet-long arachnids — horseshoe crabs are more closely related to spiders, scorpions and ticks than to crabs — because they interfered with human enjoyment of the shore and were viewed as shellfish predators….
“People, not just fishermen, were reportedly encouraged to toss horseshoe crabs above the high-tide line, so they would dry out and die. They were labeled ‘pests’ and ground up for fertilizer. Beachfront property owners were apparently concerned the creature’s presence and their decaying death would impact real estate values.
{Horseshoe crabs are harvested for their blood’s medical applications.}
“Those ignorant days may be over, but horseshoe crabs are facing other threats to their existence.’’
“The Center for Biological Diversity, an Arizona-based nonprofit, and 22 partner organizations recently petitioned NOAA Fisheries to list the Atlantic horseshoe crab as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act….’’
To read the whole article, please hit this link.
