Sharing the Beach
I discovered the most alarming thing this weekend while spending time on the shores of Ocean City, NJ. I was walking down the boardwalk, enjoying the sights, sounds, and off season crowds, when I looked out at the beach and saw as far as the eye could see piles of seaweed, trash and other beach “litter”. Being a curious person, I wondered down the steps and onto the beach, to discover that what I was calling other beach “litter” were actually hundreds of dead horseshoe crabs.
After realizing that the lumps in the sand were horseshoe crabs, I stood there in puzzlement. I didn’t know if this was natural or not for the horseshoe crabs. Of course the first finger that I pointed was at the actual trash littering the beach; Pepsi cans, soda bottles, a plastic alligator, styrofoam cups and a bunch of popped balloons. But was this really it? Was there a toxic spill somewhere out in the ocean that killed these crabs? Were they beached and then died? I just didn’t know, and so was bewildered the remainder of the weekend. It’s all that I could talk about. “How was your weekend away?” My response… “I saw the strangest thing…”
Today, when I had a moment, I looked the horseshoe crabs up online to see if I could figure something out. What I found made sense. Apparently one of the largest
populations of the crabs are right off the Delaware coast, and what I thought were all dead crabs could have easily been the outer shell from their molting. I think that half of them were really dead though, which could have been from any number of things. The crabs like to crawl up on shore, which leaves them vulnerable to crashing waves, hungry birds or even people interferance.
I may never know for sure why there were so many dead horseshoe crabs up on the beach. I’m sure a lot of it was natural death, but I’m also sure that there was some human induced factors in there as well.