WEST OCEAN CITY – On a drizzly October morning, waist-high bins of wriggling, squirming horseshoe crabs lined a dock in West Ocean City.
While most boats use the harbor to unload their catch, passersby watched as the Rita Diane was loaded up with bin after bin of horseshoe crabs. The fishing boat, which goes out five nights a week to catch the crabs, returns them to the water after they’ve had a few tablespoons of blood removed at a collection facility. That blood plays a vital role in ensuring vaccines — including any potential COVID-19 vaccine — are safe.
“If every person on the face of the earth gets at least one shot in their life, they owe their health to the horseshoe crab,” said Allen Burgenson, chairman of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries’ Horseshoe Crab Advisory Panel.
Horseshoe crabs, which live along the East Coast of the United States, were harvested for fertilizer and livestock feed up until the mid-20th century. In recent years, however, the crabs have been caught primarily for bait and biomedical purposes. Since the 1970s, horseshoe crab blood has been used to make the Limulus Amebocyte Lysate (LAL) test. That test detects endotoxin.