.....horseshoe crabs

Yogis,
Did you know that horseshoe crabs are the oldest living animal? They have inhabited this earth for over 400 million years. Think about that for a moment. 400 million years. That means they were here even before dinosaurs and have changed very little in that time. That is some incredible staying power.

Although we call them crabs, they are an arthropod, more closely related to the spider and scorpion than the blue crabs we annually hit with mallets on a newspaper covered table at summer dinners under the stars. They can live to be twenty and find their nourishment in small creatures on the floor of the ocean and bays. They use their claws to crush the food and place it in their mouth which is found in the center of their ten legs.

I learned all this while participating in the annual Delaware Bay horseshoe crab survey……

When we signed up we had heard about the hundreds of thousands of horseshoe crabs that arrive in the Delaware bay and congregate at the edges of the water to spawn under the new and full moons of May and June. Arriving at 9:30 at night to a dark parking lot at the back of the state park we looked for the group and instead found only Rob, a science teacher who would be our leader. It took us a moment to realize that this was it, so with headlamps on, off we went.

Walking a kilometer along the shoreline to get to the starting point the full moon shone bright, lighting our path and making the water shimmer. The Chuck Will’s Widows, a relative of the whippoorwill bird, sang their songs loudly in the night marsh. No one else as far as the eye could see. As high tide arrived we began our counting.  Rob would walk six paces and we would all stop to look in the water. ‘Zero-zero’ was what he would announce most often. No females. No males.

Wait! There is a cluster. Two males holding onto a female, who is always much larger, with front claws shaped like boxing gloves. She, working hard to bury her bottom half in the sand to lay nearly 20,000 eggs, which the guys will then fertilize. These eggs then become a critical food source for the migrating birds who use the mid-Atlantic as a rest stop. Many other creatures, like slipper snails, depend on her shell to attach for shelter and egg laying. She is essential in the web of life.

Who is their main predator? Us, of course.

Fishermen cut them up as bait and their unique blue blood is widely used in our medical industry. Beach development is also shrinking their natural habitat. Now listed as ‘vulnerable’ on the endangered species list, work is underway to help protect these living fossils. Therefore…. the survey and bay events.

This weekend for me was all about horseshoe crabs but I realized it could be almost anything. As we spread ourselves wider and deeper we interrupt these natural cycles that in some cases have been going on for millions of years. We are seeing the evidence.

Diving in though can be a good first step. Taking the time to learn, understand and even hold each of the individual things which make this incredible universe work can make us want to protect them. Opening awareness. Building relationships. Seeing our interconnectedness.

We don’t want to be the ones who end a 400 million year streak……

We didn’t see thousands but saw enough to care,
SARAH