A Shorebird, A Crab And A Call To Action

The red knot has begun its 9,300-mile migration from its wintering areas in the Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego regions of Argentina to its mating grounds in the Canadian Arctic. Like clockwork, the shorebird makes a crucial two-week stop each May in Delaware Bay; it is estimated that nearly 90 percent of the surviving Atlantic red knot population can be found there on a single May day.

The bird’s annual arrival coincides with horseshoe crab spawning. Crab eggs are essential to the red knot, which consumes enough to double its body weight and gain the strength to complete the nonstop last leg of the journey north.

Around 2000, it became clear to scientists that the red knot population was crashing, possibly because of accelerated commercial harvesting of the horseshoe crab in Delaware Bay in southern New Jersey and on Delaware’s eastern shore during the 1990’s. Fewer horseshoe crabs meant fewer eggs. It is estimated that fewer than 13,000 of the long distance migrant red knots remain, down from around 60,000 in the 1980’s. Last month ‪the New Jersey Department of Environment Protection placed the red knot on its endangered species list.

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