Red Knots & Horseshoe Crabs: A Talk by Author Deborah Cramer, March 21
SOLD OUT!
Tonight’s talk by Deborah Cramer at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, is sold out!
Each spring a small shorebird called the Red Knot migrates from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic, stopping on the way on Atlantic Coast beaches, including several in Connecticut.
Its flight coincides with a different migration – that of the familiar horseshoe crab. When the moon is full in spring, horseshoe crabs emerge from Long Island Sound and other coastal waters to lay their eggs, a prime source of protein for Red Knots.
It’s a feat of biological timing that has gone on for eons. But both creatures are in peril now. Red Knot numbers are so low that it has been listed as federally threatened; the entire American population of horseshoe crabs is now considered vulnerable.
And considering the benefits to medicine that horseshoe crabs provide, their demise would have major consequences for human health.
Cramer’s talk will be the first in a spring series presented by the Connecticut Audubon Society, called “Conservation Lectures: Defending the Earth, its People, and its Wildlife.”
Major support for the lectures is generously provided by Lawrence J. Lunden, a former member of Connecticut Audubon’s state Board of Directors.
