Action alert: Support a bill in Hartford that would help shorebirds by saving horseshoe crabs
Red Knots rely almost exclusively on horseshoe crab eggs during migration.
This will help carry out the recommendations in the 2021 Connecticut State of the Birds Report, “Three Billion Birds Are Gone. How Do We Bring Them Back.”
March 2, 2020 — The shorebirds that pass through Connecticut during migration rely on horseshoe crab eggs for the energy to continue migrating. You can help them by supporting a bill in Hartford that might increase their numbers.
Unfortunately, horseshoe crabs populations in Long Island Sound have plummeted. That has imperiled the birds, in particular the federally-listed Red Knot and the Semipalmated Sandpiper, which used to be abundant at places like Milford Point.
Connecticut Audubon strongly supports a bill being considered in Hartford to ban the hand harvest of horseshoe crabs in Connecticut.
The horseshoe crabs caught in Connecticut are used as bait in the whelk and conch fishery. Almost all of the horseshoe crab catch is hand harvested. The average annual catch in Connecticut is about 20,000 crabs.
The bill is being considered by the General Assembly’s Environment Committee. It is H.B. No. 5140 An Act Concerning The Hand-Harvesting Of Horseshoe Crabs In The State.
Our request is that you look at the list of committee members. Click here and then click the Committee Membership drop down menu. If your State Senator or Representative is on the list, contact him or her.
Tell them that you support HB 5140 and that you want them to vote to move the bill out of committee.
This bil is completely consistent with the problems and solutions detailed in our 2021 Connecticut State of the Birds report, titled “Three Billion Birds ARe Gone. How Do We Bring Them Back?”
Here are excerpts from Connecticut Audubon’s testimony, submitted by Executive Director Patrick Comins:
The Connecticut Audubon Society strongly supports any effort to restore populations of horseshoe crabs in Long Island Sound.
Connecticut needs to play an appropriate role to focus on rapid restoration of the population … so horseshoe crabs can quickly resume a functional role in ecosystems.
Increasing horseshoe crabs … critical to the viability of the federally listed Red Knot (Calidris canutus rufa), other migratory shorebirds, sportfish, and forage fish that occur on the Sound.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) manages the horseshoe crab stock from Maine to eastern Florida. In 2009, the conservation community joined with the ASMFC to better manage the harvest of horseshoe crabs. The resultant Adaptive Resource Management framework represented a useful new tool in our efforts to restore horseshoe crab populations after the devastating overfishing of the 1990s.
Ten years later restoration remains a distant goal, particularly in our region (Connecticut, New York, and northern New Jersey) where stocks of horseshoe crabs have been determined to be in poor condition.
This is occurring even though the reported commercial harvest has been well below the horseshoe crab quota established by the ASMFC for CT.
Horseshoe crabs are primarily harvested commercially to be used as bait for the commercial American eel and whelk/conch fisheries along the Atlantic Coast. Connecticut has prohibited hand-harvest on Milford Point, Sandy Point in West Haven, and Menunketesuck Island in Westbrook, and recently the Town of Stratford included their beaches as a closed area.
We strongly feel that because of the poor condition of the horseshoe crab population in our region and the inability of the population to recover under the current fishery regulations, the only remaining course of action is to invoke a ban on the harvest of horseshoe crabs and to ban the use of horseshoe crab as bait in Connecticut.
Similar action should be implemented by the State of New York. We strongly support any efforts to restore populations of this critically important natural resource and restricting the hand harvesting of horseshoe crabs will be an important step in our efforts to recover populations of this species and the ecosystem that depends on their presence.
