Sign the Ban

Pity the poor horseshoe crab. It is, without question, a survivor almost beyond compare. Consider this: There are fossils of the creature dating back 445 million years. Dinosaurs arrived about 200 million to 250 million years ago — which means the time between us and dinosaurs is equal to the time between dinosaurs and the earliest horseshoe crabs. And they’re still here, nearly unchanged.

But they finally may have met their match. The American horseshoe crab has “vulnerable” status, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The population faces a whole series of challenges, including sea-level rise, coupled with shore hardening, which means fewer beaches for them to reproduce on. Still, humans are a primary threat, since the creatures are harvested by commercial fishermen as bait, and by the pharmaceutical industry, which uses the crab’s blue blood to test vaccines and medical devices.

Coastwide regulations allow the harvest of about 1.6 million horseshoe crabs each year. In the late 1990s, nearly 3 million crabs were being harvested each year, almost exclusively for use as bait by commercial fishermen trapping conch and eels. Today, harvests are well below 1 million crabs per year, according to Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission estimates; the population is in decline in this region.

The New York State Legislature has addressed this crisis by doing its job and passing the Horseshoe Crab Protection Act, which would ban the harvesting of horseshoe crabs in New York waters for biomedical or commercial fishing purposes. The measure sits on Governor Kathy Hochul’s desk and would go into effect on January 1, 2026, if she signs it.

State Senator Anthony Palumbo has voted against the bill in both of the last two years. He was joined in the Assembly last year by Fred W. Thiele Jr. — but this year the new assemblyman, Tommy John Schiavoni, voted in favor of the measure, along with 99 of his colleagues.

Hochul vetoed a similar bill last December. She said her veto would prevent potential economic impacts on fishermen and the medical industry. Hochul went on to say that “the experts” at the State Department of Environmental Conservation are the ones who should make a decision about restricting harvests of a marine species, not the State Legislature. “To that end, I … am directing DEC to evaluate and implement further administrative measures to protect this species, pursuant to its broad authority to protect and regulate the state’s marine resources,” she added.

But, since then, the limited measures the DEC has enacted do not appear to be having an impact. Staffers at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, Connecticut, published a paper in Scientific Reports in August showing a severe population decline in the horseshoe crab population in Long Island Sound. Aggregating biodiversity studies for the first time, the study found a decline of up to 9 percent a year in the population — which led them to see “a need for urgent action to prevent local extinction.”

The study noted that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission in 2024 determined that the Long Island Sound’s horseshoe crab population was in “poor” condition, even as the entire Northeast was rated “neutral.” It was the worst-rated region in the ASMFC report.

It’s notable that the neighboring states of New Jersey and Connecticut have already banned the commercial harvest of crabs in their waters to address declining numbers. But that has only driven up the demand — and the price — in a market like New York, where the practice continues. The commercial fishing industry is pushing hard for Hochul to veto the legislation once again.

There’s a pretty strong likelihood she will, and it’s not based on the science. It’s a simple political calculation: Hochul faces reelection next year, and a veto this time will be both consistent with her past position and seen as pro-fishing and, in a general sense, pro-agriculture.

It will not, however, be in any way pro-environment.

The Group for the East End is leading a campaign to encourage Hochul to sign the measure. They have collected more than 400 emails and 200 postcards urging the governor to support the legislative ban, according to Bob DeLuca, the group’s president. The group is joined by more than 50 other organizations that have formed a coalition in support of the ban, including the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Citizens Campaign for the Environment.

Beyond the benefits for the horseshoe crab itself, there is other ecological fallout based on the population’s decline. Horseshoe crab eggs are an important food source for shorebirds, like the endangered red knot. As with everything in nature, a decline in one species affects others.

Every step forward to protect the environment faces opposition based on economics, and politics. The East End can stand on principle here: In most every sense, the environment has won out, and the region is the better for it.

The State of New York would be better if Governor Kathy Hochul signs this legislation and demonstrates that, given a choice, human beings can find a way to coexist with a creature that has lived for millennia, rather than being the species that finally wipes it out altogether.