The Way Of The Dinosaur

Years ago, I was working on a story about the overfishing of horseshoe crabs for Wildlife Conservation Magazine.  It was an irresistible excuse for a road trip, of course, and so my wife and I drove down to Chesapeake Bay together.

On our first morning there, we pulled into one of the main horseshoe crab landing spots and watched as a handful of them fought their way up through the surf and onto the beach.  But it was early in the season and there weren’t all that many of them yet.  Indeed, at one point, four horseshoe crab fisherman bounced out of a truck, looked around at the sparse pickings, and drove off without even taking any.  Before they left, though, one of them stopped to stare at me and my camera.

Later that morning, my wife and I went into a diner for breakfast and who should be there but the four fishermen.  And it didn’t take long for the one with the staring problem to ask what I was doing there, and for us to get into a debate about the health of the horseshoe crab population.  I brought up the short-sightedness of fishermen picking up tens of thousands of horseshoe crabs as they came up the beach, before they’d had a chance to lay their eggs.  I also mentioned a few studies that had found declining populations, as well as the simple eye test – right there on the walls of the diner, black & white photos taken just 30 years earlier showed stunning numbers of horseshoe crabs on the beach, way more than could be seen now.

My new friend was unimpressed.  “Horseshoe crabs aren’t going anywhere,” he said.  “They’ve been around since the dinosaurs.”

Before I could answer, another of the fishermen, the guy who looked to be the oldest of the group and certainly the alpha, leaned in close to his buddy.  “Seen any dinosaurs walking around lately?”

And that was that.  Suddenly, the other three had nothing to say.

I still think of that guy – usually when I’m looking at a horseshoe crab.  Of course, horseshoe crab numbers continue to plummet.  Here in the northeast, we don’t get anywhere near the numbers of them that they get farther south, but you can still see them.  And now is the time of year to do it.  The smaller males are hanging around in the shallows, waiting for the bigger females to come by.  They'll then latch on and the two of them – sometimes three of them (sea creatures just know how to live) – make their way up onto the beach to lay and fertilize their eggs.  It’s a pretty cool sight.  And an ancient one, too.  After all, they've been doing it since the dinosaurs were around – for whatever that's worth.