Horseshoe Crabs
Long Beach Island
Memorial Weekends
1973-1996
They arrived every Memorial Weekend, hundreds of them lined the bulkhead along our house that overlooked Barnaget Bay. We would go down in to the water at low tide and try to find the longest string of entwined crabs. They linked together by their tails, five or six or more locked together. We would pick up the cluster of them and show off these pre-historic creatures. Then we would fling them back in the water.
And then each year, fewer and fewer of them would show up. We wondered what happened to them. Finally, we never saw them again. They changed their migration pattern.
Recently, I went to Lewes Beach in Delaware. There were plenty of horseshoe crabs. We were not allowed to handle them and our guide warned us, "If you ever have to pick them up, do not pick them up by the tail. You will kill them. It pulls all their muscles out."
Damn, I wonder if my family killed all of the horseshoe crabs in Barnaget Bay?
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