Horseshoe crabs are mating like crazy in Jamaica Bay, attracting poachers and onlookers

Horseshoe crabs are mating like crazy in Jamaica Bay, attracting poachers and onlookers 

BY MARK MORALES / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

THURSDAY, MAY 30, 2013

When Martin Schreibman heard that four men were arrested for poaching horseshoe crabs in Jamaica Bay, the local sea creature expert wasn’t surprised.

This is, after all, this is the time of the year when the crabs — so-called living fossils who’ve been on the planet for 420 million years — emerge from the surf to engage in a frenzy of copulation that litters the beach with interlocked chelicerate for miles.

“It’s like an orgy,” said Martin Schreibman, marine biologist with Brooklyn College who has been called “the sex god” in several local papers.

“You can’t miss them. You see them right at the edge of high tide,” said Schreibman about the horny horseshoe crabs in heat.

On Monday cops nabbed two men for allegedly stealing 200 horseshoe crabs from Jamaica Bay. The men were likely planning to drain the animals of their blood, which is prized for medical research.

“I'm not surprised they were stealing them. I’m surprised they were caught,” said Schreibman. “There is no protection. You can go to the beach and take as many as you want.”

The arrests were a bit of a fluke. An NYPD helicopter crew conducting night-vision exercises spotted four men taking the sword-tailed creatures from the shoreline of a small island known as the Ruffle Bar and throwing them into 35-foot motor boats. Two men escaped.

Schreibman said more enforcement is needed to keep the horseshoe crabs safe and on the shore.

The U.S. Park Police said it would step up patrols along the beach to stop poachers from their illegal horseshoe crab harvest.

So far, six poachers have been arrested in the last two years, including two who tried to speed away with 950 horseshoe crabs.

“It’s like a target of opportunity,” said police spokesman, Lt. David Buckley. “[Horseshoe crabs] happen to be here right now so this is what they’re after.”

Meanwhile, Schreibman said he’s still in awe while he trolls the shore spying the group sex show.

When they mate, larger male crabs hold down the female crabs using two boxing glove-like appendages. Several males typically copulate with each female.

Each lady crab has 80,000 eggs that can be fertilized over several mating cycles during the season. The females deposit their fertilized eggs in the sand. When the offspring are born, they’re carried out to see on the tide.

“When you see thousands of them right on the shore it’s incredible,” said Schreibman. “It’s a biological phenomenon.”