Free Republic

New research from Plymouth State University and the University of New Hampshire indicates that collecting and bleeding horseshoe crabs for biomedical purposes causes short-term changes in their behavior and physiology that could exacerbate the crabs' population decline in parts of the east coast. Each year, the U.S. biomedical industry harvests the blue blood from almost half a million living horseshoe crabs for use in pharmaceuticals—most notably, a product called Limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL), used to ensure vaccines and medical equipment are free of bacterial contamination. This lifesaving product can only be made from horseshoe crab blood, says researcher Win Watson,...

Will the Birds Stop Returning to Delaware Bay? By TINA KELLEY Published: May 23, 2005 CAPE MAY COURT HOUSE, N.J. - The red knots were already three days late on their flight north from the bottom of the world and the people waiting for them were beginning to get nervous. The birds' dining table was not even set.On the full moon of the fifth month of the year, horseshoe crabs crawl up on the beaches of Delaware Bay to mate, as they have for 200 million years. A decade ago, they covered the beach like cobblestones, and flocks of red...