COLUMBIA, S.C. — Dozens of critical habitat areas for threatened shorebirds will be protected after a U.S. District Court in Charleston handed down an order prohibiting three groups from harvesting horseshoe crabs on several of South Carolina’s beaches this season.
Red knots — a threatened migratory shorebird — depend on horseshoe crab eggs for survival, each one fueling up on hundreds of thousands of the arthropod eggs in South Carolina on the way to the Canadian Arctic, according to previous reporting by The State Media Co.
But when horseshoe crabs are taken from the beaches red knots flock to, harvested for the benefit of pharmaceutical companies that use the crabs’ blue blood to detect bacterial toxins, it removes the red knots’ food source. Companies in Europe and Asia have switched to using a synthetic copy of the ingredient, which does not require horseshoe crabs to be captured or bled, The State Media Co. reported.
