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Horseshoe crab harvest comes under scrutiny
Banner Daily Update Sat. Nov. 17
By Kaimi Rose Lum
Banner Staff
WELLFLEET — The horseshoe crab may be one of the shellfisherman’s best friends. Scooting along the harbor bottom “like little rototillers,” the crabs churn the sediment up and keep the shellfish habitat healthy, says longtime local aquaculturist Barbara Austin.
They even help the baby clams out by eating the pesky marine worms that get packed into the nets and end up competing with the shellfish for food. “The clams just don’t grow as well” when there are all those worms around, Austin says, admitting she’s “no expert and no scientist” but relying on the personal observations she’s made over 23 years of operating a shellfish grant.
So you can understand the shellfisherman’s aversion to seeing bunches of these helpful horseshoe crabs caught and chopped up and used in conch pots as bait. That is what happened this past summer when an out-of-town fisherman showed up in Wellfleet Harbor and took boatload after boatload of the crabs out of the water.
“I had never known of such a large horseshoe crab harvest in Wellfleet,” said Austin, who was one of several residents to voice concerns about the status of the local horseshoe crab population at last weekend’s State of Wellfleet Harbor conference, an annual get-together for scientists and citizens to talk about the issues surrounding one of the town’s most precious natural resources.
It was when biologist MaryJane James-Pirri delivered her presentation on horseshoe crab densities in the area that brows around the room began to furrow. James-Pirri’s research — done in coordination with Mass. Audubon and state fish and wildlife authorities — shows that horseshoe crab spawning densities are lower in Cape Cod Bay than in Pleasant Bay, Monomoy and other horseshoe hotspots.
The numbers are downright alarming to the the wildlife experts at Mass. Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.
“Every Memorial Day weekend and weekends around that, we take people out to show them the spawning horseshoes. This year when we went out, there were no crabs. There was a boat harvesting them,” said sanctuary director Bob Prescott.
Results of a preliminary census of spawning horseshoes conducted by the sanctuary along Wellfleet’s beaches last spring also were “dismal ... really pathetic,” Prescott said.
Worried that the crab population could be suffering a serious setback, the Audubon sanctuary is rolling up its sleeves and working with the state Div. of Marine Fisheries to make recommendations for some sort of horseshoe management plan. The problem is that there is only very loose regulation of the horseshoe crab harvest at the state level, according to Prescott. A crab catcher can harvest 1,000 horseshoes on each tide, five days a week, “and nobody sees his catch.” Worse, the crabs are allowed to be caught when they are spawning, which means that all the females are being harvested.
“That just isn’t right for a resource in Massachusetts,” Prescott said.
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Nov 15th, 2007