In late spring, horseshoe crabs, which look like pieces of armor crawling along the seabed of the shallow waters of the Buzzards Bay shoreline, will soon surface. They’ll emerge from their bottom habitat to launch an extraordinary amphibious landing on sandy beaches for an annual ritual to mate, nest, and lay eggs for the next generation.
This has happened annually since almost the beginning of time, and as one of the oldest living creatures on Earth, it has earned them the prehistoric title of a primordial species.
Their impeccable timing is precisely in tune with the rising flood tide of a new or full moon that will wash them up into the intertidal area between low and high tides where the male and female interact as she digs a nest in the sand to lay up to 4,000 eggs. She endeavors to safely cover the eggs up before the next lunar heartbeat of a higher incoming wave.
The female may then breed again and nest several times up and down the beach, laying as many as 100,000 eggs before crawling back into the sea.
Scientists estimate that only one in 130,000 horseshoe crab hatchlings survives to reproduce, but Mother Nature ensures that not many will go to waste. The abundant legacy is a godsend to migratory birds throughout their long, tiring journey of their own seasonal migration because, after burning up all their energy, they find rest stops with an abundant cornucopia on which to feast and refuel their bodies, often doubling their weight.
Native Americans also valued the horseshow crab shells they found to make container bowls for liquids, and they made good use of their sharp tails fastened to the point of a spear to harvest fish.
However, the most remarkable legacy today is in modern medicine and research using fibers of their hard primitive shells called Chitlin as a substance to stitch up wounds and fill cracks of broken bones. Even more vital is their blood used in testing medicine and healing drugs by turning from red to blue to raise a flag of any bacteria or germs detrimental to human healing and health. As the increased prescribed treatment of antibiotics has proven life giving and saving for humans, it seems that the horseshoe crab has over millions of years evolved and fortified within itself powerful immunities to survive unchanged, while exposed to a very unhealthy underwater environment.
For the future, water pollution and global warming possibly hold the greatest threats that we have inadvertently brought upon them that could break the link of a prehistoric chain older than that of dinosaurs and which has earned them the nickname of living fossils. We might call their annual spring ritual a honeymoon gala on the beach, but as planets in the heavens pass each other in time and space, the end of one life cycle on Earth is the beginning of another, and our observation and appreciation of it all bears testimony to its heavenly orchestration, even for the lowly horseshoe crab.
By George B. Emmons