Be a Peeping Tom for horseshoe crabs
Want to help find spawning horseshoe crabs?
The state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has put out a call for volunteers to help identify horseshoe crab spawning habitat this spring.
New Jersey’s Delaware Bay beaches are the main spawning, or egg-laying, grounds for the world’s largest concentration of horseshoe crabs.
This year, the state Division of Fish and Wildlife is looking for current, personal observations of spawning activity. It’s all part of an effort to protect the horseshoe crabs and their habitat
Why all the fuss about horseshoe crabs?
Horseshoe crabs have been around for 250 million years. Their primitive body structure has withstood the test of time. Their thick curved shell makes it hard for predators to eat them. And they’re tough! They can go a year without eating and can endure extreme temperatures and salinity.
Their eggs provide food for at least nine species of migrating shorebirds. The Delaware Bay has the Western Hemisphere’s second largest spring shorebird migration – and has attracted a $34 million ecotourism industry in Cape May and Cumberland counties alone.
But there is cause for alarm. Long-term research shows that horseshoe crab concentrations along the Delaware Bay beaches have declined significantly. One reason is overharvesting of adult horseshoe crabs as bait for eel, whelk and conk.
To preserve the crabs and crab eggs, several mid-Atlantic states, including New Jersey, have now limited the crab harvest.
A severe decline in crab eggs means the future of these migrating birds is at stake.
For instance, red knots must gain 80 grams, nearly doubling their body weight while feeding in the Delaware Bayshore, in order to reach their artic nesting grounds and be capable of laying eggs.
You’ll find horseshoe crabs moving onto sandy beaches to mate and spawn. Areas that are protected from waves are particularly popular, like sandy beach areas within bays and coves. If you come across mating horseshoe crabs, you’ve found a spawning ground!
If you want to help with this spring’s survey, your best chance to find activity is from a few days before to a few days after the June 22 full moon.
You can report your observations by filling out a “Horseshoe Crab Spawning Habitat Identification Form” at the Division’s Web site. You can also call their toll free phone number, 1-866-NJ-CATCH (1-866-652-2824); just be sure to leave your name and telephone number so someone can reach you.
Michele S. Byers
executive director
New Jersey Conservation Foundation
Far Hills
Host families sought for visiting French students
They call McDonald’s “MacDo” (pronounced “dough”). They can’t get enough of the TV sitcom “Friends.” Football is a very big deal. They don’t do ketchup, but they want nothing more than to try an authentic American hamburger.
On July 8, World Exchange will be welcoming 87 French students, ages 15 to 17, to our area of New Jersey. They are looking forward to basking in all that is American: barbecues, baseball games, corn on the cob, pancakes with maple syrup. They want to show you pictures of their best friend and share what they’re studying in school (we’ll be welcoming a future musician, a vet, a judge, a landscape gardener, and even an astrophysicist!) They want to tell jokes, talk politics, and teach you how to say, “Sorry, I don’t like mayonnaise” and “Where is the nearest bathroom?” in French.
Sept. 11, 2001, has not deterred these teens one bit from wanting to experience a slice of what it is to be American. They are ready to hop on a plane and end up in the homes of complete strangers in order to better understand what we’re about.
Now we are looking to complete the other half of the equation. We need you to take a risk and open your home just for 19 days. We promise it will be like nothing you have ever tried before. You’ll very possibly create memories so funny and unforgettable that you’ll be traveling to France to visit your student just in order to make more.
As Benot Lemaux put it, “I will never forget me the times I had with my host family! The biking, watching “The Simpsons” in English, Susie in “Guys and Dolls,” John’s victory at baseball, Stew asking me all the time, ‘Where is my beret?’ I hope they write me and come visit with me in Montparnasse one coming day!”
Please, please, please don’t shut your door on this. It’s simply too much of a good time to miss out.
If you are interested in finding out the true meaning of “joie de vivre,” (the joy of life), call Rose in Manchester at (732) 408-9658 or the World Exchange main office at (800) 444-3924, or e-mail [email protected]. World Exchange is a nonprofit international/intercultural student exchange organization.
Rose Trafton Foor
Manchester
Regional coordinator
for World Exchange