November 13, 2020 — Researchers scouring beaches from Brooklyn to Montauk found nearly four times the number of horseshoe crabs than they did last year, but a lead scientist said it’s little cause for celebration.
The annual survey, conducted during the crabs’ prime breeding season of May to August by the Center for Environmental Research and Coast Oceans Monitoring at Molloy College, found 957 horseshoe crabs this year compared with last year’s 16-year low of just 243. This year’s number is also the highest in the past four years: 2,202 were found in 2016.
On Long Island, iconic horseshoe crabs are used not for food but chiefly as a bait, to catch whelks, also known locally as conch, and eels. Whelks have been important to Long Island fishermen after the large drop-off in the Long Island lobster population.
State regulators say the 2020 commercial harvest was down, but they are still analyzing population data. A 2019 assessment by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission found the New York horseshoe crab population to be in “poor condition.”