The Atlantic horseshoe crab’s evolutionary lineage has barely changed in the last 450 million years. But it’s now under unprecedented pressure in Massachusetts from human activity.
For years, the bifurcated horseshoe crab industry here has operated in relative equilibrium. The bait fishery sells chopped-up horseshoe crab meat to the whelk fishery. Meanwhile, the biomedical fishery, which until last year consisted only of the East Falmouth-based Associates of Cape Cod (ACC), harvests the animals to extract a valuable antibacterial compound called Limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL) — used to test vaccines for bacterial contamination — from their bright blue blood.
But the arrival of a second biomedical processor on the Cape last June, Charles River Labs in Harwich, along with an increasing annual harvest and subsequent calls for enhanced regulations from conservationists, have pushed the management of this ancient species into the spotlight.
Conservation Concerns
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the Atlantic horseshoe crab is globally “vulnerable.” Notably, a 2019 Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) report indicated that the localized horseshoe crab stock in Massachusetts had risen from “poor” to “neutral” in the past 10 years, and Mass. Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) survey data confirms that the population is increasing.
But conservationists point out that horseshoe crabs take roughly 10 years to reach sexual maturity, and that Massachusetts is one of the only Atlantic states that allows harvesting during the spawning season, April through mid-June. The crabs play an interconnected role in the delicate Atlantic ecosystem: the decline in the Delaware Bay horseshoe crabs from overfishing has hurt the rufa red knot shorebird population there, according to Delaware Audubon.
And while the biomedical fishery is functionally a catch-and-release operation, the ASMFC estimates that mortality rates from horseshoe crab bleeding are around 15 percent. Other studies have found mortality rates of up to 30 percent.
In a February memo to the Marine Fisheries Advisory Commission (MFAC), DMF Director Daniel McKiernan urged stricter rules for both fisheries. “I am concerned about the potential for continued growth in the exploitation of this resource and the ability for us to capture a stock decline before it occurs,” he wrote.
The DMF received 1,342 written comments in support of closing the horseshoe crab harvest during spawning season. Nonetheless, at its May 16 meeting, MFAC rejected McKiernan’s proposal for a blanket harvest closure from April 1 to May 31 — shortened from his initial suggestion of a Jan. 1 start date and shorter than the Jan. 1 to June 15 ban supported by the Horseshoe Crab Conservation Association. Currently, both the bait and biomedical fisheries are subject to five-day lunar spawning closures around each new and full moon from April 16 to June 30.
ACC has operated in Falmouth for nearly 50 years. According to spokesperson Brett Hoffmeister, the company’s peak processing season is in June and July, “when the weather is more conducive to fishing and the staff has been trained,” he wrote.
MFAC did approve lowering the bait harvest quota from 165,000 to 140,000 and implementing a 200,000-crab biomedical quota for the first time, to be split evenly between the permitted laboratories.
According to data from DMF, the biomedical fishery landed nearly 175,000 crabs in 2022.
Biomedical companies can also bleed bait crabs before returning them to vendors to be sold and counted towards the bait quota, a practice known as the “rent-a-crab program.”
“So many people are disappointed, frustrated, angry, puzzled,” Mass Audubon science coordinator Mark Faherty said. “People are asking a lot of questions about what exactly the Marine Fisheries Advisory Commission is.”
A nine-member appointed body, MFAC currently has seven commercial fishermen and two biologists. The DMF’s proposed spawning closure failed by a vote of 3-4-2, while the motion to implement new quotas passed 6-1-2.
The quotas, Faherty said, were “just playing catch-up.”
Other states along the Atlantic Coast have taken a far more conservative approach to regulating horseshoe crab harvesting than Massachusetts. Delaware bans dredge harvesting from Jan. 1 to June 30 and has a total year-round ban on harvesting female horseshoe crabs. Connecticut just prohibited the hand harvest of horseshoe crabs except for research. New Jersey closed the fishery entirely in 2008. South Carolina allows only the biomedical fishery and has increasingly limited harvesting.
Charles River Labs set up shop in Harwich last summer just months after it was revealed that the company had offered the South Carolina Dept. of Natural Resources $500,000 for a special harvesting permit, which the state declined. The company also faces ongoing legal challenges from conservation groups in federal court.
Company spokesperson Sam Jorgensen declined to provide collection and bleeding numbers at the Harwich lab but wrote in a statement that “in Massachusetts, we are working closely with DMF to ensure our 2023 collection is in compliance with the newly implemented biomedical quotas.”
Dead Crabs, Shifting Markets
The spawning closures failed quietly. But a month later, the fishery was back in the news after DMF biologists responded to a report of numerous dead crabs that washed up on Hardings Beach in Chatham. On June 10, they counted 1,210 crabs along a 1.15-mile stretch. Faherty said a similar die-off occurred last summer.
“This appears to be a localized event, and we believe the crabs were harvested as bait and dumped at sea after dying while in holding,” DMF spokesperson Danielle Burney said in a statement.
But Heather Haggerty, who operates the conch wholesale dealer Big G Seafoods in New Bedford and freezes horseshoe crab bait in large vats, said that the analysis offered by state biologists and reported in the press didn’t make sense to her. “Bait fishermen would never throw crabs away because they’re like gold,” she said. “The only people that would throw crabs away are people who have accumulated too many for other purposes.”
The fact that DMF is now pursuing an “in-season adjustment” to horseshoe crab bait harvest limits does confirm that the early-season harvest this year has far outpaced past benchmarks, suggesting potential saturation in the bait market. As of June 16, the bait fishery had already landed 92,648 horseshoe crabs out of the 140,000 permitted for the season, the DMF announced. “Under current limits we anticipate an earlier than expected closure,” the public advisory wrote. MFAC is scheduled to vote on this recommendation at its July 10 meeting.
The recommendation highlights yet another divide within the fishery between hand harvesters, who collect their crabs when they come up on the beach during spawning season, and the mobile gear fishermen who can trawl for crabs far offshore year-round.
Justin Pascarelli is a longtime hand harvester in Chatham who sells his crabs to biomedical vendors. “If they take away the beach fishing, they’re just handing the whole thing to the trawlers at the expense of the hand pickers, the people who propped up the lab for the last 20-something years,” he said.
Pascarelli also takes issue with new biomedical permitting rules being rolled out by DMF for 2024, which will create new “biomedical dealer” and “biomedical processor” permit categories and limit new harvester permits to individuals with an existing biomedical dealer or processor contract. This approach, he said, “seems to be to be catering to the laboratories instead of managing the fishery in a way that benefits the people who participate in it.”
The whelk or conch fishery, which drives the need for crabs as bait, is formally considered “overfished” and “depleted.”
The primarily export-based market for these edible snails is inextricably linked to the future of the horseshoe crab, Faherty said. “This is just a fishery of opportunity that they’re going to fish until they fish it out, and then they’re going to move on to something else,” he said. “And they’re going to take horseshoe crabs along with them.”
