With its armored shell, ancient anatomy, and 350-million-year lineage, the horseshoe crab almost seems too inconspicuous to stir up controversy. Yet this humble creature is at the very center of a collision between three completely different species.
For many decades, humans have harvested the horseshoe crab for use as fishing bait. Since the 1970s, we have also used horseshoe crab blood for medical purposes. But we may have gone too far. Horseshoe crab numbers have declined significantly since the early 1990’s. And, naturally, so did their egg numbers.
This is especially important to a small shorebird that is a global traveler of the most impressive kind. The red knot makes one of the longest migrations of any animal — a journey that takes it from one end of the earth to the other. To accomplish this feat, it relies on the eggs of the horseshoe crab. Without these eggs, the red knot is in danger.
In the film Crash: A Tale of Two Species, filmmaker Allison Argo tells the story of nature’s amazing ability to create fragile connections among the most unexpected creatures, and of our potential as humans to destroy those connections — or restore them.
To order a copy of Crash: A Tale of Two Species, visit the NATURE Shop.
Online content for Crash: A Tale of Two Species was originally posted February 2008.
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Many, many thanks for this program. I’m going to use it with my classes this year for species interdependence, evolution, food webs, and, best of all, careers in the sciences. Thanks especially for providing the DVD free to me for classroom use — it is greatly appreciated and will get lots of play! Please keep up the great work.
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Cool site
Thanks.
Many thanks for producing this program. Having once considered studying marine biology, I now know where to focus my volunteering effort.
Wonderful show. I’ve visited the NJ coast and the bird sanctuary (not paying much attention to it) at the tip of Cape May never to realize the importance or impact of what that specific center has for a global ecosystem. A WELL DONE DOCUMENTARY!!!
PERFECT!!!
I as well have a project this semester to make up a law and support it, I have chosen to make a law banning harvesting of Horseshoe Crabs for bait. I agree, A WELL DONE DOCUMENTARY!!!
[...] 8, 2009 in Uncategorized Courtesy of PBS show, Crash: A Tale of Two Species. This show aired last year on [...]
In early 2000-2005 I had an incredible opportunity to see horseshoe crabs in the Delaware bay on Lewes beach. I have seen then in all sizes but never in the egg stage. I even rescued at least 50 from a net that this idiot man had deliberately set to catch fish on the incoming tide. He was not a real fisherman or waterman. Just someone who was lazy and didn’t want to go out and fish from a boat. He was so mad because his new expensive huge net had been destroyed by the crabs trying to escape. I was so mad at the man and told him I didn’t care about his net; but he had to help me free as many as we could as the crab’s survival was more important than his net and it served him right for trying to net fish. I feel so fortunate to have seen the crabs and help a few survive man’s stupidity. Anything that can be done to ensure the crabs and Red knots survival should be done. We are all affected every time we lose any species and someday we may not exist. Excellent documentary.
In the late 1970s-80s I was fortunate to spend part of my childhood summers at my friend’s cottage at the Maryland Chesapeake shore and the horseshoe crabs were everywhere on the shore back then. I can’t believe how these animals have suffered so much since then. I hope they find a better alternative to the pharmaceutical benefits so 12% of crabs don’t die in the process.
This documentary has a long lasting effect on me. The crualty and selfishness of humans will surely destroy life on the planet. Nothing is sacered, most societies allow to mankind to kill, torture each other and any and all animals as they pleased. Of course there is always some “great excuse” going with it. It makes me sick, very sad and angry. I can only pray that animals will never suffer as we cause them pain beyond our own imagination.
I knew that they existed but I never knew that the Horseshoe was diminshing.
When everything is gone and humans are forced to eat each other we’ll say stupid things like, “Well, they WERE here for us to eat and use. Now our dead are dying for US.” I just hope I’m long gone by then.
My wife, LBB Ward, and I had a house right on the water at Reed’s Beach, NJ for over 16 years and our noticing the drastic reduction in the Horseshoe Crab population in the early to mid-nineties was one of the inspirations for her fabulous all ages novel, “Professor Angelicus Visits The Big Blue Ball.” It’s a densely educational and entertaining tour de force which explores the extreme interrelationship between all of Earth’s creatures.
http://professorangelicus.com
Correction:
My wife, LBB Ward, and I had a house right on the water at Reed’s Beach, NJ for over 16 years. Our noticing the drastic reduction in the Horseshoe Crab population in the early 1990s was one of the inspirations for her fabulous all-ages novel, “Professor Angelicus Visits The Big Blue Ball.”
It’s a densely educational and entertaining tour de force which explores the extreme interrelationship between all of Earth’s creatures and water.
There’s a whole chapter “The Bay, King Harry, and the Shorebirds” devoted to this exact relationship.
She was also very instrumental, through the Delaware Riverkeeper, in forcing the current moratorium on the crab poaching.
http://professorangelicus.com
/a>Amazon.com
What do the red knots eat on their return trip at the Chesapeake?
This was a very heart touching story on the Horseshoe Crabs and the Red Knot Birds. It is time to start a program that keeps the crabs from being harvested. This will keep the bird cycle to flurish as once they did a few years ago. These species have been with us to long for us not to try and save them just as for the crabs. When we needed the crabs for wealth they were there and thankfully they are still here with us. Lets give back to them because they do have a word in this too. Man, crab, and bird come from the same world and they deserve to be here just as us humans. Excellent Sunday story.
Thank you for the well done documentary. Showing the interconnection between species and how man’s interference can have deadly affects is critically important. There is no doubt that man’s impact is profound and reaches all points of the earth. While this film points to a very specific tie-in between two species and man, I hope that everyone takes a hard look at their owm impact from everyday life. Seemingly insignificant personal actions have profound affects on our environment. Everyone of us share the responsibility to find a way to live sustainably and in harmony with the ecosystem that supports us all economically and biologically. One way to do that immediately is to scrutinize every product you buy from tooth paste to your next car.
Will there be a follow-up to “Crash” regarding the status of the RedKnots on their return flight from the Artic?
Fantastic episode!
Thanks.
Wonderful show and very educational. I will never look at the horseshoe crab the same again~
I walked on Ave of Americas at 44st 11:45pm May 1, 2009 and saw an odd dead bird with a long beak, light brown and speckled. I thought how strange for a shore bird to be on the NYC sidewalk. Watching the show tonight I am certain it was a Red Knot. Is mid-town on the flyway and did it fall out of the sky? It was not yet stiff and not apparently mangled. It was not there tonight, pity I did not stop to take a photo.
oh thx i needed facts!!
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[...] technology hands down.If you’re interested in finding out more about the horseshoe crab…PBS Nature episodeThe Ecological Research & Development Group [...]
[...] on the Delaware bay to photograph the Red Knots. The Red Knot population is decreasing with the decrease in Horseshoe Crabs. These crabs, which are harvested for use as bait, come up on the beaches along the Delaware Bay in [...]
[...] Crash: A Tale of Two Species (PBS Television) [...]
[...] 9, 2009 by capemayblackdog Check out this great special on Nauture for Crash of 2 Species on the great horseshoe crab and all of the things that surround [...]
saw the documentary only last week… it caused me to wonder…. but i always end in awe! we are their caretakers! we are given the responsibility to take care & protect them… awesome creations! ad majorem Dei gloriam! we are interconnected therefore! keep it up guys!
the shows said only 13% of the horse shoe crabs do NOT surviey the blood thinG! :( poor things! they did not do anything to bother or hurt us! what did they ever do wrong?! (nothing!) i feel bad for them! i think the pepole should not be aloud to do anything to them! If the pepole who take the blood out of them should know/ feel that if that where them getting the blood out of them… it would really hurt! so the next time someone you see is taking the blood out of thme remember… just wounder…” what if that were me getting hurt and diying because they were taking the blood out of me! and only 78% of my species survived! And 17% of my spesies died of this!” just remember. just remember!