Conservationists and fishing industry wrangle over how or whether to protect horseshoe crabs

Delaware conservationists and the commercial fishing industry are still searching for ways of protecting horseshoe crabs and the species that depend on them while allowing fishermen to make their living without being further restricted by state quotas.

Ahead of the springtime arrival of thousands of horseshoe crabs to spawn on Delaware beaches, environmentalists and some state lawmakers are discussing a possible bill that would ban the harvest of the ancient creatures in Delaware waters.

But the case for banning the harvest for bait – as New Jersey did in its waters more than a decade ago -- is weakened by data from several credible sources showing that the population of the ancient creatures in Delaware Bay is increasing, thanks to a ban on the harvesting of female crabs imposed since 2012 by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, a federal regulator.

Still, it’s not clear whether growing numbers of horseshoe crabs spawning on the beaches are also increasing the quantity of crab eggs that sustain shore birds, notably the red knot, during their globe-spanning migrations. Egg-density, a crucial measure of the crabs’ ability to feed the birds, is still just a fraction of what it was before red knot numbers crashed starting in the late 1990s when too many horseshoe crabs were removed from bay beaches by the commercial fishing industry.

The knot’s failure to recover in any significant way since then was cited by the commission in its decision for the last two years to continue its ban on harvesting female crabs, while issuing quotas to Delaware and the three other bay states – New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia – for the harvest of the far more numerous male crabs.

After deciding for the last two fishing seasons against allowing the female harvest to resume, the commission is now considering extending that for multiple years, and held a public hearing last month to gather comments.

Delaware’s Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, which implements horseshoe crab quotas set by the commission, said it remains opposed to any restart of the female harvest.

“Delaware has chosen to remain risk adverse and only allow the harvest of males. Seasonal harvest restrictions and daily quota monitoring will continue to be used in management of the bait fishery to ensure Delaware’s male-only harvest remains within our quota,” the agency said in a statement.

But a decision to extend the female harvest ban would mean the fishing industry is deprived of part of its income, argued Stuart Potter, a fourth-generation commercial fisherman who currently works out of Bowers Beach. He estimated that the quantity of female crabs not caught costs the industry $200,000 to $250,000 a year.

To give the industry renewed access to female crabs, Potter proposed allowing fishermen to take thousands of newly dead crabs – both male and female – from beaches and coastlines where they have become stranded and then sell them for conch bait just like the crabs that are caught in open waters.

The hand-gathered crabs would count against the state’s quota and result in fewer live crabs being caught for bait, Potter said.

“It's allowing fishermen to take the dead crabs off the beaches before they spoil, both male and female,” he said. “If we did that, we could report those crabs and take those crabs off the quota.” The program would allow fishermen to take horseshoe crabs that had been dead for not more than two days, after which they become worthless, Potter said.

But Potter’s idea is unworkable, argued Glenn Gauvry, president of Environmental Research and Development Group, a Dover-based nonprofit that works for the conservation of horseshoe crabs around the world.

Delaware Audubon

“I think it would be a mess,” he said. “There is no way these guys want animals that have been dead two days. How does that work? All of a sudden, they become biologists and develop an expertise in forensic mortality?”

In the legislature, Rep. Sophie Phillips (D - Bear) is trying to forge a consensus between the environmentalists who want to ban the harvest for bait and the watermen who are fighting against more restrictions on their livelihoods. Phillips has been trying to create a working group in which representatives from all sides might hash out their differences.

“The goal is to come up with a bill,” Phillips said. “The watermen and the group that wants to ban the harvest of horseshoe crabs have been fighting for years, but no one has ever had them in a room together with data to talk through this issue. I know my colleagues don’t feel comfortable passing a bill until that situation is worked out.”

The conservation group Delaware Audubon is among those pressing for a ban but might accept a bill that offers some protections to crabs and birds.

“If that is a non-starter because there will not be enough votes in the legislature due to opposition from the watermen, a compromise bill that will get passed but will still contribute to horseshoe crab and red knot protection is better than no bill at all,” said Delaware Audubon President Steve Cottrell.

Even if the legislature passes a bill to protect horseshoe crabs from the bait fishery – as New Jersey did in 2008 – it won’t protect them from the pharmaceutical industry which uses LAL, an extract from the animals’ blood, to test for endotoxins in medical products, and is not covered by quotas from the ASMFC. The number of crabs taken for bleeding exceeded that for bait for the first time in 2020 and did so again in 2022 and 2023, according to ASMFC data.

The commission does not publish data for the biomedical ‘take’ from the Delaware Bay specifically but said the number of horseshoe crabs taken by the industry throughout the Atlantic Coast was 1.1 million in 2023, the highest since 2010 when some 481,000 crabs were bled for the industry. It takes a portion of each animal’s blood and then returns it to the water where an estimated 15 percent die, according to the ASMFC.

By contrast, some 739,000 horseshoe crabs were taken for bait in 2023, of which Delaware’s quota was 168,000.

To reduce the biomedical take, naturalists have been pressing the pharmaceutical industry to use a synthetic alternative to the crab-based product in the hope that switching would reduce demand for crabs and improve the outlook for red knots and other declining shorebirds. The synthetic product was approved for U.S. users last year by USP, an independent nonprofit that sets scientific standards for big pharma.

The pharmaceutical industry as a whole has not commented on whether or by how much it has switched away from the crab-based product since the USP endorsement, but advocates hope more companies will adopt rFC, the synthetic alternative.

“With the USP approval fully in effect, pharmaceutical companies should now be moving quickly to transition away from bleeding horseshoe crabs and toward using the synthetic alternative,” said Ben Levitan, an attorney for EarthJustice, an environmental law firm that has threatened to sue the ASMFC over its proposals to restart the female crab harvest.

There were 40 million mature male horseshoe crabs in the bay and 16 million mature females in 2022, according to the most recent data from ASMFC. “Mature female horseshoe crabs have been steadily increasing in the region since the implementation of the initial ARM Framework in 2012,” the commission said, referring to the model it uses to set quotas.

The data indicate that the horseshoe crab population in Delaware Bay is indeed rising, said David Smith, an emeritus scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey. He cited surveys by Delaware, New Jersey, and Maryland; by the U.S. National Atmospheric and Aeronautical Administration; and by Virginia Tech. They don’t all say exactly the same thing, but all support the analysis that the animal is recovering.

“They are not redundant sources of information, but the estimates are relatively precise, supporting high confidence in the inference that the population is recovering, and abundance has increased significantly,” Smith said.