This animal has lived here millions of years. How a CT-based group wants to save it from extinction.

A Connecticut-based animal advocacy organization has petitioned the federal government to classify an animal that lives in a Long Island Sound as an endangered species.

“The goal is to create an effective and uniform method to protect these (the Atlantic horseshoe crab) species from exploitation and to protect them from extinction,” said Jennifer Best, the director of Friends of Animals Wildlife Law Program.

This month, Friends of Animals submitted a petition to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce to list the Atlantic horseshoe crab as “endangered” or “threatened” under the U.S. Endangered Species Act — a designation that would prohibit the killing of horseshoe crabs without a permit on the eastern seaboard.

The petition argues that current protections under a Fisheries Management Plan are incapable of protecting horseshoe crabs from overfishing, habitat loss and bleeding by the pharmaceutical industry, which they say is driving the species to extinction.

In Connecticut, the horseshoe crab population has deteriorated since the early 2000s. Last year, researchers from Sacred Heart University labeled Long Island Sound’s horseshoe crab as “functionally extinct.”

This summer, Connecticut enacted a statewide ban on horseshoe crab harvests, joining New Jersey and parts of Delaware and South Carolina in expanding protections.

While Best said state-level regulations are important, she emphasized the need for uniform horseshoe crab conservation at the federal level. According to the Friends of Animals petition, research has shown that “when one region strengthens its regulations, other regions experience corresponding increases in harvest rates.”

“Unfortunately, if one state has some regulations and surrounding states don’t, then the industries can kind of shift and still collect just as many horseshoe crabs,” Best said.

More than 750,000 Atlantic horseshoe crabs were harvested as whelk and eel bait in 2021, according to Friends of Animals

Over the next 40 years, the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species projects that Atlantic horseshoe crab populations will shrink “100% in the Gulf of Maine, 92% in New England, 11% in New York, 55% in Florida Atlantic and 32% in Northeast Gulf of Mexico.”

Friends of Animals said this isn’t just bad news for the horseshoe crab. The population decline is also detrimental to the shore birds and other marine life that rely on horseshoe crabs and their eggs for food, including the endangered Red Knot bird and the Atlantic loggerhead turtle.

Surviving five mass extinctions and three ice ages, Horseshoe crabs are somewhat of an evolutionary marvel. According to biologists, the “living fossils” have remained practically indistinguishable from their ancient ancestors of almost half a billion ago.

“It would be devastating for human exploitation to be the end of the species that has been around for so long,” Best said.

Ironically, a key evolutionary asset to the horseshoe crab is now a top contributor to its declining numbers. Horseshoe crabs’ distinct blue blood is incredibly adept at protecting the body from infection. When its immune cells detect a toxic bacteria, the blood coagulates, trapping the intruder.

For the last 50 years, the compound responsible for this reaction, limulus amebocyte lysate, has been the standard for bacterial contamination screenings of all vaccines, pharmaceutical drugs and medical devices.

Each year “bleeding labs” collect hundreds of thousands of horseshoe crabs, drawing roughly a third of a crab’s blood volume before releasing it back into the wild. An estimated 15% to 30% die in the process, conservationists say. The ones who survive can experience “significant” changes, including decreased reproductive fitness.

It’s a multimillion-dollar industry, with some analysts reporting the cost of blue blood at $60,000 a gallon.

According to Friends of Animals, bleeding labs collected 637,029 horseshoe crabs in 2019 — a 30% increase from the previous year. They said the demand for blue blood has continued to rise, writing in the petition that “the three-fold increase in vaccine production from 2019 to 2021 in response to COVID-19 likely resulted in a proportionate increase in horseshoe crab harvest.”

Horseshoe crab advocates argue that the blue blood harvest is unnecessary when synthetic endotoxin detectors are available. A non-animal-derived alternative entered the commercial market in 2003, but the FDA did not approve a drug tested with this synthetic reagent until 2018.

While Best said these blue-blood alternatives are widely used in Europe, they have yet to catch on in the U.S.

“There needs to be a little push from the regulation side to make sure that people are using that safe, alternative route, rather than exploiting horseshoe crabs,” Best said.

She said that the U.S. could limit pharmaceutical use of horseshoe crabs by listing them under the Endangered Species Act.

“We are hoping that they’d be protected wherever they’re found, and if they were (listed as) endangered then they couldn’t be taken without a specific permit,” Best said. “That would apply not just to fish bait industries, but also to the pharmaceutical industries.”

Best explained that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has 90 days to review the petition and determine whether a listing under the Endangered Species Act may be warranted.

If the petition passes this step, it advances to a months-long data review and a 60-day comment period for the public, species specialists, other experts and federal and state agencies.

Best said that if everything follows the timeline, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could issue a ruling within the next year.

An Endangered Species Act listing is critical, Best said, for the survival of the Atlantic horseshoe crab and the species that rely on it.

“(Horseshoe crabs) play an important role in helping ensure the health of the Atlantic-state coastal ecosystem,” Best said. “They have been around for millions of years, and I think we should do the best we can to protect them for the future.”