Bait harvesters are being blamed for what beachgoers described as thousands of dead horseshoe crabs that washed up on a Chatham beach.
Brewster resident Erik Paus estimated there were as many as 2,000 horseshoe crabs at the high tide line over the weekend. (Several days later, state officials counted 1,210).
“I’ve lived on Cape Cod for 40 years and never seen that type of die-off on any beach along Cape Cod,” Paus said several days after making the discovery.
They were strewn across along a 1.5 mile stretch of beach, with many rotting by the lighthouse.
It appeared, according to state officials, that after the crabs were harvested, they died somewhere in the storage process, and were dumped at sea because they had decayed to the point where they were no longer marketable as bait crabs.
“After assessing, this appears to be a localized event,” said Danielle Burney, a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF).
Initially, there was concern among conservationists that the die-off could be related to the biomedical industry, which extracts horseshoe crab blood for lifesaving treatments. But biomedical facilities are required to mark the underside of the crabs harvested under a biomedical permit with a specific mark, dictated by DMF and after bleeding, crabs will also have a needle mark in their membrane as it heals.
Officials said there were no needle marks or other signs of biomedical use on the dead crabs examined at Harding’s Beach. There also weren’t any signs of die-off from from other species on the beach, officials said, indicating that there was no water quality or environmental issue.
State officials said they'd continue to monitor the situation to avoid furthering what Paus called a “waste of a valuable resource.”
