Such A Fragile Balance

The cycles of nature always have, and always will continue to astonish me. Every seasonal change serves as a constant reminder of how incredibly fragile most ecosystems are.

 

When I was about 7 years old (in the very early 1980’s), I vividly remember going to Cape Henlopen with my parents and younger brother Jeff each summer. We’d always leave at dawn, packed like sardines into the backseat of my father’s 1977 Ford Bronco. The same Ford Bronco that was loaded up the night before amidst a thunderstorm of fatherly obscenities. He’d cram that thing to the gills with all manner of surf fishing gear, chairs, food and beach equipment. It had vinyl seats, no A/C, and almost no suspension. Surf rods went on top, big red cooler went on the front. And the faint smell of defrosting squid and baitfish might just catch you by suprise every once in a while. About a half an hour into the journey, we’d always stop at the McDonald’s in Elkton and grab Egg McMuffins for breakfast. Jeff, 3 years old at the time, would always insist on "the big breakfast" that came in a flat yellow styrofoam container, complete with copious amounts of maple syrup. This would undoubtedly turn Jeff into "the big mess" about ten minutes later – adding even more tension to an already uncomfortable car ride. 

About two hours after breakfast, you could gauge exactly how close you were to Henlopen by the smell. The gigantic, deteriorating Sea Coast fish processing plant sat right next to the entrance to the Cape. They processed Menhaden there, I believe… and in the stifling June and July heat, you could smell that place at least 10 miles away. The thick, oily, fishy smell would sometimes congeal with the pungent smell of dead horseshoe crabs which lined the beach by the tens of thousands back then. It was a hellacious journey, and even if you survived the heat and stench of the two hour trip, you’d still have to deal with the biting flies, the suntan lotion assault, lettting the air out of the tires, and the sand that would stick to everything once you actually got to "the beach".

Being released from the Bronco was like escaping from prison. I’d cut loose, running away as fast as I could into the ocean breeze. Everything was fresh and clean, and the sand felt cool and refreshing on the soles of your feet at that time of the morning. We’d always fish on the ocean shore of the Cape – the easternmost side, just around the corner from the stagnant breakwater. There was usually a cool breeze on the ocean side, but sometimes the wind would shift. Instead of the refreshing ocean breeze, the wind would come from the west – from the bayside of the cape – a land breeze. Like a plague, this hot summer air would bring along with it swarms of biting green flies and the unbelievably fetid stench of the fish packing plant mixed with rotting, decomposing horseshoe crab carcasses. Sometimes Jeff and I would venture to that side of the Cape just to see what we could see, and I always remember it looking like the aftermath of some type of horrible battle. There was a strange, dark green and black layer of funk and foam coating the sand, and dead crabs would be piled up on top of each other by the dozens near the tide line. Some were upside down, some were on their sides. All of them were dead. Seagulls and some assorted shorebirds would be there picking at what was left.

That was almost thirty years ago. Some of my fondest childhood memories, to be sure. Back then, I knew nothing of the horseshoe crabs or their symbiotic relationship with the Red Knot. Nothing at all. All I knew was that there were so many dead crabs on the bayside beach you couldn’t walk on sand without stepping on one. (Well, that and that the smell was horrendous) My young mind couldn’t fathom why so many were dead, but I was always curious to find out what the heck killed them all.

Up until five or six years ago, I hadn’t followed through one bit with finding out exactly what could have decimated all those crabs. It was around that time I met my wife, and we started spending a lot more time at her parent’s beach house in Fenwick. I returned to Cape Henlopen every time we went down to the beach and started wondering why there were hardly any crabs to be seen – dead or alive.  Lewes and Cape Henlopen still had that comfortable, familiar feel to me, but the horseshoe crabs were missing. They were neat to watch. They were part of what made Henlopen, well… Henlopen. I started to research and study as much as I possibly could about the crabs to find out why we weren’t seeing them anymore. Turns out all those dead crabs we used to see on the beach were simply dead because they never made it back to the water in time. They were just the leftovers… the ones that didn’t make it. But that wasn’t the reason for their recent scarcity.

To briefly sum things up for those not familiar – horseshoe crabs are some of the oldest living creatures on the planet. Roughly 200 to 400 million years ago, they were around doing the same things they do now. Way before the dinosaurs and even before flowering plants, they were here. Seriously stop and think about that for just one moment. Before flowering plants even existed, and almost 100 million years before the first dinosaurs, the horseshoe crabs were crawling around the ocean floor, doing their thing. And each and every spring, during the high tides of the new and full moon in May and June, they would congregate en-masse on the beaches of the Delaware Bay to spawn and lay eggs.

Somewhere along the way, the Red Knots picked up on the fact that every May and June there’s literally tons of food waiting for them as they pass through the area.  Red Knots migrate over 10,000 miles from the southernmost tip of South America (Tierra del Fuego) to the Northern Canadian Arctic where they breed. They depend on the crab eggs to fatten up quickly in order to make the rest of their flight in time for the summer. Horseshoe crab eggs contain so much fat that the knots can double their body weight in just ten days. Unfortunately for the Knots, humans over the last century or so had also figured out that horseshoe crabs made great fertilizer and bait for eels and conch – and there were no limits on how many horseshoe crabs you were able to catch. Over the last decade or so, there’s been a huge decrease in the number of horseshoe crabs that have made it to the beach to spawn because of this. This in turn has been causing the Red Knots to decline at an alarming rate. Over 80% of the population of Red Knots has been wiped out in the last ten years. Once numbering nearly 100,000+ the birds have declined to about 15,000. They were simply starving to death before making it to the Arctic to breed.

But this year was a good year. Quite a few factors played into it, I think – one of which being a moratorium on harvesting crabs for two years from 06-08, and the other was the weather. There was no giant spring nor’ easter like last year to destroy everything, the weather was simply perfect. It would seem that both the crabs and the knots are doing slightly (if not amazingly) better. For the first time in a long time, I was able to see numbers of crabs that reminded me quite a bit of my childhood. And the Knots seem to have made a slight comeback as well. Something I did notice about this year compared to years past was that the crabs seem to be doing much better further to the north. Fowler Beach, Slaughter Beach, Mispillion Inlet and Port Mahon all seemed to have much higher numbers of crabs than I ever saw at Cape Henlopen. Not enough to totally cover the beach, but pretty close. The Knots seemed to really be concentrated at Mispillion and Slaughter beach also, and tended to stay in those spots. I even returned to Port Mahon a week ago and was able to catch that old familiar stench. There were hundreds of dead crabs leftover there, some had made it all the way into the road with the tide. Hopefully a good number of them made it back to the bay as well, or were at least able to fertilize enough eggs to make the sacrifice worthwhile.

Photo wise, I was not able to capture any great shots of the Red Knots due to how far away they were from the inlet. Nobody wanted to disturb them either, so keeping your distance was a good thing. The birds in the gallery above are mostly Ruddy Turnstones, Semipalmated Sandpipers, Dowitchers and assorted birds from the last few weeks of shooting.

If you’re interested in learning more, here’s a great PBS film: "Crash: A Tale of Two Species" Oh, and if you ever find yourself walking on a beach and happen upon a horseshoe crab upside down, just flip ‘em or take them down to the water. They don’t pinch, and are completely harmless.