Walk along the shoreline on any North Fork beach and occasionally there appears a rare and odd sight — a horseshoe crab — that scarce dinosaur-era crustacean that either fascinates or repulses. Their numbers here have steadily plummeted, and now legislation that supporters hoped would reverse their decline has been vetoed by Gov. Kathy Hochul. Environmentalists are concerned this action will make the horseshoe crab a less frequent visitor to our beaches, but supporters of the bill say jobs will be saved.
The Horseshoe Crab Protection Act, Assembly Bill No. 10140, which easily passed both houses of the New York State Legislature, would have prohibited the harvesting of horseshoe crabs for commercial fishing bait or biomedical use. Blood from horseshoe crabs has been used in five FDA-licensed Limulus amebocyte lysate manufacturers along the East Coast that process the blood to test vaccines.
In her veto letter, Gov. Hochul wrote that state Department of Environmental Conservation “has already announced four lunar closures for the upcoming year to address concerns about overharvesting the horseshoe crab population. This bill could have unintended consequences on the management of other species such as whelk and eel and could harm the commercial fishing industry. I am directing DEC to evaluate and implement further administrative measures to protect this species pursuant to its broad authority to protect and regulate the State’s marine resources.”
Bonnie Brady, executive director of The Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, said, “I’m very, very happy. This is a great Christmas present for the commercial fishermen on Long Island because if you look at the facts, the crabs are highly regulated.
“Most of my days of my life are spent looking at surveys which don’t have the best science,” she continued. “For some of our members, the horseshoe crab is 15% of their catch; for others it’s 100%,” she continued, also claiming that although fishermen are allowed to take 300,000 crabs a year, only half that number are being harvested. Approximately 400 out of 1,000 fishermen statewide are permitted to harvest the prehistoric crabs.
According to Samantha Rosen, public participation specialist at the DEC, “All New York horseshoe crab harvest is bait harvest;there is no biomedical harvest of horseshoe crabs in the state. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina currently collect horseshoe crabs for biomedical purposes. Those crabs are required to be released alive in the same state they were collected from.”
She added that the “estimated mortality rate is 15% of all horseshoe crabs processed and released alive by the biomedical industry. There is no data to suggest that biomedical harvest in other states is positively or negatively impacting the New York population of horseshoe crabs.”
Ms. Rosen also said horseshoe crabs are an important part of the East Coast’s ecosystem and that the DEC is committed to their conservation and protection by working cooperatively with Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to manage the species in the region. According to the DEC, horseshoe crab landings in New York State are strictly monitored and managed.
According to the website of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which monitors quotas in each state, the horseshoe crab is used as bait in the American eel and whelk fisheries in New York. ASMFC studies, which tested the effectiveness of alternative baits to horseshoe crab, showed that alternative baits were not effective as attractants.
In 2022, the DEC implemented regulations for the commercial whelk fishery to minimize the impact of this fishery on horseshoe crabs. Regulations require that whelk pots or traps using horseshoe crabs as bait must contain a bait bag — a mesh bag designed to keep the bait within the trap and reduce bait loss from the scavenging of other aquatic species. Whelk pots with bait bags do not need to be re-baited as frequently, reducing the need for new horseshoe crab bait and the need to harvest more horseshoe crab.
This most recent legislation is the latest effort to save the species. Two years ago, the DEC took steps to prohibit horseshoe crab harvesting from beaches at the peak spawn, during the last two weeks of May and the first two weeks of June around the new and full moons.
“The aim is to strike a balance with conservation and the fishery. The hope was that this would increase the number of eggs that the horseshoe crabs deposit on the beaches during the peak spawning season and increase recruitment,” said Dr. Matthew Sclafani at the Cornell Cooperative Extension. “But we won’t know the results for eight to 10 years, as that’s the amount of time needed for the crabs to reach sexual maturity and spawn on the beaches.”
Since 2007, DEC and CCE have worked together to monitor horseshoe crab spawning activity on beaches during May and June. Monitoring sites stretch from Staten Island to Fishers Island. There are two monitoring sites on the North Fork: West Creek and South Harbor Park in Southold on Peconic Bay. Data show slight increases in spawning activity for these two sites in the most recent years. Complete data collected from more than 20 monitoring sites shows varying trends. There are currently no monitoring sites in Long Island Sound waters off the North Fork.
Jen Hartnagel, director of conservation advocacy with Group for the East End, which lobbied for the bill said, “Obviously we are very disappointed with this outcome. In the face of bipartisan support in the New York State Legislature, input from numerous reputable science organizations — including the Center for Biological Diversity, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Long Island Sound Study— thousands of letters of support from concerned New Yorkers, and even a letter from Dr. Jane Goodall, Gov. Kathy Hochul has vetoed the Horseshoe Crab Protection Act.
“The bill was based on a strong foundation of scientific data, and would have enacted the same protections that New Jersey and Connecticut have. New York has now fallen behind in the conservation of this species, and it is not acceptable,” Ms. Hartnagel said. “The decision punted it back to the DEC, the agency that has been managing the species, with little success and no assurances that the population will bounce back anytime soon. We expected more from Gov. Hochul and we will continue to champion this effort next legislative session. We are disheartened but not deterred.”