Native Foods Blog: Synchronicity in Nature: The Red Knot & The Horseshoe Crab

by Holladay Allen

Native Foods Cafe

Last week, I wrote about the plight of the horseshoe crab. Gazillions of these “living fossils” are being harvested for their precious blue blood, which contains a compound found nowhere else on the planet, LAL, or Limulus amebocyte lysate. The toll this is taking on the horseshoe population is already depressing enough…. But then you take into account another species that depends on the horseshoe crab for its survival, and the story gets downright miserable. The Red Knot is a shorebird (which means they are waders, or birds that like to wade through the water with their long ballerina legs). The Red Knot likes to hang in some extremely cold regions in the Arctic then head on down to warmer regions for vacation once a year.

The Red Knot, Native Foods Cafe, vegan, vegan food, vegan restaurant

Truly a migratory bird, the Red Knot travels more than 9,00 miles every year… which is one of the longest migrations of any bird! On their way to South America, they have several critical stopover points where they refuel and replenish. One of these stops for the American subspecies of the Red Knot is Delaware Bay. A routine Red Knot layover in Delaware Bay involves some “pecking,” which is essentially snacking on the eggs of horseshoe crabs and fishing out mollusks buried in the sand.

Horseshoe Crab Eggs, Native Foods Cafe, vegan, vegan food, vegan restaurant

But in recent years, as the horseshoe crabs have been disappearing, so have their eggs… duh. So there has been a significant drop in the Red Knot population as this major stop over on the long and arduous flight down to Rio is no longer providing enough sustenance and nutrition to sustain the journey. The New Jersey Audubon Society estimates and 80% decline in the Red Knot population in the last 10 years. Yikes. 80%? If we were to compare that of the world’s population of 7 billion…. That would be 5,600,000,000 humans gone in one decade. This is a huge bummer.