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The last twenty years have not been kind to shorebirds searching for horseshoe crab eggs.
Shorebirds depend on Delaware Bay. They fly great distances between breeding and wintering areas, stopping over at crucial rest stops in can only be seen as an endless journey. Of all the places they visit, Delaware Bay stands apart. Here shorebirds can gorge on horseshoe crab eggs and build fat at unprecedented rates. A red knot arriving at 125 grams can grow to 230 grams in just a few weeks. In most stopovers, the same gain would take a month or more. To accomplish this physiologic feat, they search the Bay for dense horseshoe crabs eggs wherever they occur.
The last 20 years have not been kind to birds searching for eggs, however. The overharvest of crabs and resulting crash of egg densities from the 50,000/square meter to 6000 meant death for approximately 70% of the shorebirds relying upon the eggs. Shorebird numbers fell by tens of thousands, red knots from over 90,000 in 1985 to 15,000 in 2005. Very little has improved since. Why? As usual, the answer rests beneath layers of agency speak, industry manipulation, uncertainty within the data, and more. The short answer follows the money.
The agency regulating crab harvests thinks their doing all they can
The Atlantic States Marine Fish Commission (ASMFC) believes they have done all they can. They dismiss the legally sanctioned killing of over three-quarters of a million crabs every year. They also dismiss abysmal egg densities and the lack of any improvement in the number of female crabs in their 10-year survey. The ASMFC sees stability good enough. They assume conservationists will be happy with that.
But if it weren’t for the conservationists, there wouldn’t even be stability. When the agency allowed a free-for-all harvest of horseshoe crabs in the late ’90s, commercial fishers quickly ratcheted up the kill from less than a hundred thousand to 2.5 million each year. In truth, the ASMFC would have let them decimate the population, stopping only when fishers couldn’t profitably harvest. They even have a name for it – economic extinction – or driving a species so low in number that one cannot profitably catch them. The agencies, the bleeding companies, and fishers would have economically extinguished the horseshoe crab population of Delaware Bay. Bird and fish conservationists stopped them.
Unfortunately, our long fight has barely staunched the wound bleeding crabs. Unaccustomed to anyone but industry and industry-backed fishers disagreeing with the agency, the ASMFC responded with only half measures. The pressure against the harvest grew, however, culminating with the 2011 movie Crash – A Tale of Two Species, a segment of PBS’s Nature Series. The show documented the tragic ecological affair, and in response, the public demanded action. In NJ, a moratorium passed against the industry dominated state Marine Fish Council.
Maximum sustainable yield or take as many as you without making matters worse
Ultimately the ASMFC responded to conservationists by creating an experimental method now known as the ARM model ( Adaptive Resource Management) and an ARM committee of which other shorebird scientists and I took part. It relies upon complicated Bayesian statistical analysis, a method widely used in finance and other businesses in need of predictive modeling. Bayesian analysis and modeling played a big role in the collapse of our economy in 2007, so its growing used in conservation comes with baggage. It’s a “black box” analysis that requires the barest of datasets, relying mostly on thousands of simulations to determine the most likely outcome when harvesting horseshoe crabs. Although offered as a way to restore carbs, its primary goal is to maximize harvests without making matters worse.
It helped justify the conclusions of the ASMFC’s recent stock assessment of horseshoe crabs. Proudly, the complicated document declares the fishery stable and that additional conservation measures unnecessary. It’s based on a well-worn fishery concept called “Maximum Sustainable Yield.“, a gloriously inscrutable term for taking all one can as long as fishery remains stable. Does it mean the restoration of horseshoe crabs to the original number? Not in our lifetimes.
In effect, it means that a minor whelk and eel fishery and a very dark and secretive blood industry, decide what’s best for Arctic migrant shorebirds, a complex fishery food chain, endangered sea turtles and much more. If a fishery is broken, -Maximum Sustainable Yield will keep it that way.
A graphic showing the many ways horseshoe crabs die and why they have not recovered
What about restoration?
In fairness, what more can we expect? The agency’s mission boldly declares in its recent stock assessment it’s the primary goal “Manage harvest of horseshoe crabs in the Delaware Bay to maximize harvest but also to maintain ecosystem integrity and provide adequate stopover habitat for migrating shorebirds.”. Squishy and vague terms like ecosystem integrity and adequate habitat justify no action. Maximizing harvest, on the other hand, means only one thing.
One wonders, what would the ASMFC management board choose to do if they didn’t have a pesky red knot to deal with? Coming from the tailwind created by conservationists, the USFWS listed the red knots as federally threatened in 2015. The listing grants the bird real power and a justification to stop the harvest. But the ASMRC pushed the ARM plan to counter new demands for a full moratorium on harvest. Though mostly untested, the ASMFC touted the model as the innovation in fishery management that would solve the problem.
Was it a trojan horse masking the tired maximum sustainable yield model to continue harvests? The jury still out on this question because 20 years of ASMFC management has yielded no substantive improvement, only stability. Was that the intent? Why wouldn’t industries support the full restoration of horseshoe crabs when it benefits everyone, crabs, birds, fisheries, businesses, and yes, even their bottom line?
The fishing and biomedical industries own the horseshoe crab regulatory system
The complicated answer lies deep in the Magnason Stevens Act, the federal act that enables the ASMFC. Among other new fisheries regulations, it created regional councils throughout US waters. Each varies in achieving sustainable fisheries, but overall less than 30% of the US fishery is considered to be sustainably managed, so not the best of government endeavors. The ASMFC’s record is difficult to determine, as they use different terms for depleted in different fishery management plans. Paul Eidman of Menhaden Defenders estimates the Commission’s record at almost 80% overfished or depleted.
Fishery management plans run awry for many reasons, ranging from climate change to unmanaged bycatch. Figuring out the truth often requires careful and expensive scientific investigation. The emphasis and support for this work, mainly fall on the decisions of management boards where the predominated concern is the needs of the industry. Read industry, not small family fishers or sportspeople who rarely attend or can afford to participate in the lengthy and plush gatherings of the agency. But representatives of multinational, national and regional companies abound, and they have nothing to gain from new regulations.
Politics contaminants the scientific process
I believe the overarching reason for the poor record of the ASMFC is the influence of politics on what should be a scientific enterprise. On the west coast, if fishery experts tell the management board to close a fishery, it closes and stays closed until scientists open it again. As part of the Atlantic States Marine Fish Commission, a scientist may wish a fishery closed, but the politically-oriented management board may not. And so what should be a cut and dry scientific endeavor, quickly devolves into political wrangling. “If you vote to allow a bigger striper harvest, I’ll give you female horseshoe crabs,” one management board member might say to another. Or “we can’t close the fishery how about decreasing the quota”. Political dialogue like this destroys fisheries.
And who has the most political pull? Whose representatives populate all the boards and meetings? It’s not your typical sport fishers, most are working-folk and can’t afford the time. And it’s undoubtedly not bird conservationists because they have no voice at all in the meetings. No, its those who directly benefit from bad decision making, the seafood industry, and the secretive biomedical industry.
Follow the Money
As in most murder mysteries, this ecological murder mystery gets more evident when you follow the money. Unfortunately for us, the people squandering this public trust resource do their best to hide the real value of crabs. I’m not talking about “intrinsic value” or the value that brings good to your heart but $400 to $600 million each year.
Hidden from public view, biomedical firms fetch as much as $29,000 a quart for the lysate; the essential biochemical used to detect bio-contaminants in everything medical that enters your body. The only source of lysate comes from horseshoe crab blood cells. It takes only a few hundred crabs to make one quart. The industry bleeds at least 500,000 horseshoe crabs/year. They bleed crabs, killing 15% to 30% or take so much blood it leaves crabs senseless and unreproductive. It could be much worse because the ASMFC allows these secretive and highly profitable international biomedical the luxury of self-reporting, thanks to the Magnuson Stevens Act.
These same biomedical firms have contributed to the destruction of crab populations around the world. They’ve grown used to using resources and when depleted walk away, leaving ecosystems and local economies in tatters. Odd that – resource depletion in one of the wealthiest states in the most prosperous country in the world.
Conservationists should insist that maximum sustainable yield be changed to minimum time to crab restoration.
So keeping the value under wraps keep conservationists and locals properly in the dark. But none of it makes sense. What would happen to the depleted fisheries of Delaware Bay if forage fish and young game fish could feast on eggs and larvae once again? How much more blood can be harvested by the medical industry if there were triple the number of crabs? How much income would flow into cash strapped local communities of the Bay from the increased fish populations and a restored bird stopover?
Two Researchers from the University of Washington and of all places Charles Schwab Inc, Y. Tan and L. Jardin, found restoration not as elusive as the agencies lead us to think. It would take only eight years to achieve 70% of the total recovery of horseshoe crabs in Delaware Bay. In 12 years, it would be nearly complete – three times the number of today. It’s hard to believe. Imagine in 10 years we could restore the cornucopia of life that was once the Bay, abundant fish, growing bird populations, full marinas with satisfied fishers, bird tourism drawn to the shorebird spectacle of the past. So Why not?
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