We Are The Ghouls

Horseshoe Crab, Primehook Beach, DE 2011


I collect their discarded molts and dead remains while the tide retreats and the sun bleeds across the bay.  Some mornings the beach is littered with horseshoe crabs stuck on their backs, their pointed tails trying to gain purchase in the sand so that they can right themselves, their 8 legs blindly stabbing at a distant sky.  We flip them over.  But others gather them up and they are drained of their copper-based, blue blood.  Not drained until death, at least not intentionally, but drained to sate medical research needs.  It's ghoulish and cruel, with no international standards.

Desiccation is a Beach

Horseshoe Crab, Limulus polyphemus, Delaware Bay, DE, 2014


I didn't have much interest in the horseshoe crab before we spent a week on the beach in Delaware and were surrounded by them.  Curiosity got the best of me, as it almost always does, and lucky for me that our cottage rental had several books on the local flora, fauna, and even covered the geology of the region.
Above are two female horseshoe crabs, dorsal and ventral views.  The exposed pincers on the left specimen are what gives away the sex.  When sexing a horseshoe crab you simply turn them over and and look at the first set of pincers.  If they're pincer-like in appearance, then it's a female.  If they look like tiny boxing gloves, then it's a male.  The boxing glove-like appendage aids the male in mounting and holding on to the larger female.
While walking the beach we discovered many small, desiccated remains of horseshoe craps, and I brought a few home with me in a shoe box.  I should've paid closer attention because all of the specimens I gathered were female.  I'd based which ones to take on the condition of the remains, so that's my only excuse.
We're returning to the beach in Delaware this summer.  With luck I'll find a good example of a dead male horseshoe crab that's in one piece.

No Water Weight

The desiccated remains of a 5 1/2 inch long (including tail) horseshoe crab weighs half an ounce.  Unfortunately I do not have an undesiccated horseshoe crab for comparison, but I am willing to go out on a limb and hypothesize that it weighs more.