Horseshoe crabs are so fucking cool. They are more closely related to spiders, scorpions and daddy-long legs than they are marine crustaceans.
Their population management has been quite controversial in the mid-Atlantic region because several species of migratory shorebird heavily rely on horseshoe crab eggs as a food source during migration but the "crabs" have been harvest by the millions in the past for use as bait in eel and whelk fisheries. In the late 90's the harvest was completely unregulated and almost certainly unsustainable, but bird conservationist stepped in in the early 2000's to get huge restrictions on horseshoe crab bait harvest, basically it has been restricted to 500k male only harvest in VA, MD, DE and NJ since 2010. The Biomedical collection has come on strong since the late 90's but "by the millions" is a huge over statement of the collection effort. It's about half a million from Florida to Maine annually with an estimated 15% mortality on the bled crabs.
