Horseshoe crab tagging program at Assateague Island Sunday

For a few days on either side of the full moon, due tonight, May 20, horseshoe crabs will parade (mostly two by two) ashore this weekend to conduct the business of propagating the species.

While their march to the beach may likely generate a giggle or two to mammalian eyes, as the smaller males tend to latch onto a female as she drags him ashore, the process they’re engaging in is more basic: size matters.

Assateague Island Alliance volunteer Dick Arnold, who will be leading the program Sunday, said horseshoe crabs could lay 100,000 eggs at a time, and only a small percentage survive to adulthood. Survivability, he explained, is a function of how far onto land the couple can get — she to lay the eggs, and he to fertilize them externally. They wait for the full moon because of the higher tide, and the males burden the females because females of the species are bigger and stronger — so the couple can potentially reach higher ground.

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