Good news for Delaware bay Shore Birds

Way back when I worked for GE we always had a meeting in May in Philly and I'd stay over to go to the shore for the weekend.....most people stayed for the Casino...my stays were spent on the beaches from Barnegat to Cape May and in the Pinelands....I hit it perfectly in 1990, (the highest Red Knot count year), my visit coinciding with the peak of the Horseshoe Crab spawn and the Knot horde......I remember stepping out of the car at Reeds Beach and seeing sand black from the crab eggs, the water lumpy form the thousand upon thousand Horseshoe Crabs making their way to the wash zone to spawn and the Knots EVERYWHERE...so thick that they presented themselves as a wide red carpet between the black of the upper beach and the gently wash of the bay on the beach....it remains one of the most amazing congregation of birds I've ever seen.......


Fast forward to the last several years when a handful of Knots on the Beach is an event and seeing their numbers starting to improve is great news for sure......perhaps with the laws restricting harvest of Horseshoe Crabs "we got things right" in time and they'll rebound to what they historical averages were....for anyone that enjoys birds for more than a "tick" on a checklist a visit to NJ during the Horseshoe Crab spawn should be a "must see".....


Steve
 
Sounds great for wildlife...Can you go into more detail on the Horseshoe crab harvest? I never realized they were harvested. What for? My family owned a vacation house in Stone Harbor, NJ and spent many of spring through summer months from Stone Harbor south to Cape May as a kid on the beaches. Remember many of times not wanting to go into the water because Horseshoes were coming ashore.

Regards,
Kristan
 
Steve, what a sight that must of been! I can remeber fishing for stripers off the beach in Fortescue in the early to mid 90s. Every 15 mintues or so a flock of knots would pass by just offshore. They were big enough to make a low roar as they went by. Everyone on the beach would just stop and look. Never thinking in the span of two decades they would be on the brink of collaspe. (2010)

We still get big numbers of birds, but mostly Dunlin, and semi palmated sandpipers.....though the knot recovery is encouraging.


The horseshoe crabs are prime Conch bait. Nothing else even comes close. During these same fishing trips I recall old beat up pick up trucks parked at the end of the road. Guys would walk the beach and fill sack after sack with the crabs and then fill up the bed of the truck. It was literally easy pickins!

I think a limited harvest might of been ok, but it was pretty much a free for all until the crabs were gone.......
 
We used the females for bait for eel pots and conch. Stocks have dropped over the years. Local baymen would bring hundreds home and use snow fence for pens. They would live a long time out of water.
 
It's amazing to me how we can think, (and I don't fault anyone for feeling that way), that a resource is "unlimited" and that it can be harvested without concern for its well being in the future.....ignorance is bliss and who would have every thought as you watch literally hundreds of thousands of Horseshoe Crabs crowding the beaches that using them for Crab Bait could ever make a dent in the population.....goes to show that billions of eggs don't make for future generations......


We've certainly made that mistake...with everything from the Eskimo Curlew to Upland Sandpipers to Golden Plovers during the market hunting days, "JUST LOOK AT THEM THEY BLACKEN THE SKY", to the accidentally crashing the REd Knot population by depleting they're food source, (and interestingly you never hear about the impact to "other than" Knots that you know has to have happened when that enormous food source disappeared).....fortunately for us ignorance is sometimes replaced with knowledge before its too late and perhaps with the Red Knot we will have a success...Eskimo Curlews were shot past the point of return and Golden Plovers have never rebounded to previous highs but maybe, just maybe, if the Crabs rebound to previous highs so to will the Knots...and with them all the other, "lesser species", that have also declined as a result.....


I didn't follow what I'm sure was a "fight" to close the Crab harvest....ignorance can be deeply imbedded, and even more so when there are livelihoods entwined, and the "fear" of change causes many people to fight it....I feel for the Watermen who's lives were effected by the need to restrict what was once an open and unlimited season but "sometimes" you have to give up on "heritage" to insure the future.....and frankly I think a Red Knot presence is far more important than the next plate of scungilli.....


Maybe we'll get smarter in the future with Stripers and Cod and Tuna.....perhaps?.....


Steve
 
Maybe we'll get smarter in the future with Stripers and Cod and Tuna.....perhaps?.....
Click to expand...


Striper seemed to have turned the corner.
From what I understand, Cod may never recover, they may have been an ecosystem shift. And the loss of the larger "subspecies" that dominated the historic harvest.
Bluefin Tuna, too many countries and too much $$$ involved, but maybe....

Menhaden is a good analogy to horseshoe crabs, we still seem to think we can remove millions of tons of forage fish from the ocean (to make into cat food and fertilizer) and not have an impact on the entire oceanic food chain.
 
As a scion of a longtime bayshore family, I'd like to pitch a few pennies in the pot. As with most complex phenomenon, I doubt the answer lies with the simple answer. Banning bait harvesting, while no doubt helpful is but one piece of the puzzle. Ruinuous degradation of the sandy bayshore beaches, IMO, is a far greater concern. Virtually no suitable egglaying beaches existed from north of Reeds Beach to Egg Island Pt. Only last year has effort to restore this habitat been addressed (and marginally at best.) This has been a problem for at least 3 decades now. Additionally, the competition from laughing gulls cannot be discounted. These larger birds occupy bayshore beaches and crowd out the smaller shorebirds and further diminish viable egg clusters. And with respect to bait gathering, my father and his brother were paid as children (late 40s) to gather "king" crabs and would load trucks that would take them to be ground for fertilizer. Point being, human consumptive pressures have existed for quite some time and addressing the problem holistically would lead to better outcome.
regards, rich
 
Rich....as I hope I said earlier I don't blame the "excesses of the past" ..... As George Reiger once said in defense of killing the huge breeder Jewfish on the reefs..."we just didn't know".......and I most certainly agree with you that there is a loss of habitat and that that is devastating as well.....but the point here is that without the egg food base all the rest is academic.....in the 90's there was habitat loss...and there were Laughing Gulls...and there were plenty of Horseshoe Crabs and the Knots were plentiful.....it was the loss of eggs that caused the "free fall".....as those return the situation appears to be reversing itself......you gotta start somewhere and as we all know its gonna hit the little guy first and not the millionaires developing the waterfront.........


Steve
 
Rich, your quite right on your point of shoreline loss. I have pictures of my grandfather fishing in front of the old egg island light...and stories of hunting king pond when it still had a viable shoreline from the bay. How far has the shore eroded since then....? Hundreds of yards at least, if not more.

I was shocked earlier this spring on a trip to false egg point. All the high dunes are gone and what is left gets washed over on a normal high tide. The "jersey shore" got a lot of attention and help after Sandy, but For the most part, I think the delaware bay will be left to fend for itself.

The harvest "closure" is not written in stone it is in fact a "moratorium" that has been, and will be revisited I am sure.

Thanks for your input......



 
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Carl & All~

This has been a great thread! Coincidentally, I just heard a report on NPR about Atlantic Cod stocks recovering - in Scotland. I have no idea what's happening on this side of the Atlantic.

Also, reading up a bit on Whimbrel - it seems unregulated sport gunning on some Caribbean islands may be a factor in their populations.

Jode~

Can you put me onto some good Whimbrel-watching later this summer?

All the best,

SJS
 
Steve, mid summer for shorebirds can be a bit sketchy. Other than breeding Willets and yellowlegs to pin down a certain species is difficult. Most of our artic breeders will be gone by mid June and early fall migrants start to show up mid August in a cool year.

Best bet for a whimbrel in my opinion would be the Edwin B forsythe refuge outside of Brigantine. Or the varied and vast habitat in and around Cape May.


Here is a link to the NJ e bird blog.....it's a good resource to watch as they list local hotspots and what is in the area......great to figure out where the drake King eiders are hiding! LOL.

If you contact me before your trip I can do my best to show you the ropes if your up for it.

Ps some great pics here of the recent knot flocks.....

/http://cmboviewfromthecape.blogspot.com/
 
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Jode, thanks for getting this thread going. Another interesting fact about horseshoe crabs and the importance in maintaining them is their blood. Its critically important in medical testing. Their blue copper based blood is worth millions of dollars and millions of lives.

Steve, if you're thinking of Forsthye get in touch with Castelli. We are still trying to determine the significance of the shorebird harvest in the Caribbean. Working with governments and partners.

Steve Sutton, I think the best quote here is from Leopold 'intelligent tinkering with ecosystems means keeping all the parts' or something along those lines.
 
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Leopold was a wise man. And I'd agree that having only one part of the whole isn't a good situation to be in. That said I bet that he would also agree that just because you can't have it all you don't stop saving what you can. So if you can't stop the loss of shoreline that doesn't mean you don't stop the unsustainable harvest of the food base.

Every piece is important. And every action is important. And everyone action is fought by a different faction lest they be overwhelmed by the entirety. Which to me means you place a moratorium on crab harvest even though you have t stopped the habitat loss becauze if you wait by the time you solve all the pieces of the puzzle it might be too late

I believe there are special permits for blood collection on the crabs in NJ with only the males being held temporarily and then released after blood collection. Like you said BIG money and an important use that is sustainable

Unless it has been stopped in the last couple of years the Azores was another area of concern for Spring Shorebird harvest. I actually was invited to go there back in the 90's by a customer but declined, (which was a bit confusing to me since I would have jumped at the chance to have gone to Mexico to shoot Longbilled Curlews if I had known about that opportunity before it was closed -- I was older and knew more I guess by then).


Carl what I read on the Striper is that there is still serious concern about illegal harvest and breeding stocks. If that information is incorrect t then that's great news

Steve
 
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On codfish, one interesting theory on part of the decline--which overfishing surely contributed to, along with habitat loss--is that the portion of the cod population that spawned near shore in the Gulf of Maine was following spring runs of spawning alewife and river herring, feeding on them just pre-spawn, and then post-spawn feeding on the juveniles as they dropped back out of the coastal rivers and ponds.

A scientist (and long-time commercial fisherman) named Ted Ames has done a lot of research that seems to support the hypothesis that we lost the inshore spawning cod as we lost the herring runs in most of our rivers. One key piece of evidence is that the last commercially viable inshore cod stock was located at the mouth of three Maine rivers that never lost their herring runs. Another is that the historic inshore cod grounds were all located at the mouths of rivers with herring runs, and a third is the alewives were for many years the preferred bait for those fishing inshore cod.

If you have ten minutes there is a You Tube video of Ted explaining this in more detail here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf-j8lKQEPg

For the readers among you there is a brief summary and interview here from when Ted was a visiting scholar at Bowdoin College: http://www.bowdoin.edu/news/archives/1academicnews/008268.shtml
 
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Which is exactly the same thing as the Ted Knot....lose the food base they need "pre-spawn", (or fatten up so they can complete the trip to the Arctic in breeding condition), and you lose the top end consumer.....Codfish or Red Knot its the same...lose the easy and abundant food source at the most critical time and all the dominoes start to fall.....
Thanks for the link ....


Steve
 
If you're interested in the inter-relationship of the Red Knot and the Horseshoe Crab spend an hour of your time watching this video....


http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/crash-a-tale-of-two-species-video-full-episode/4772/


Possibly the second best NATURE video I've ever seen, (the best being the very recent "THE SAGE BRUSH SEA" which explores the similar crash of two Western species, Sage Brush and Sage Grouse).....excellent video that shows just how important to not only the environment of Delaware Bay but also to Humans the Horseshoe Crab is and what has happened to a very visible species as a result of its decline.....


Steve
 
I remember leading a biology field trip of 10th grade biology students to Sandy Hook in 1990, my first year teaching at St. Benedict's in Newark. (Loved the school, but this Maine boy didn't like living in Jersey much. Too hot, too many people. But I loved the Pine Barrens, the Water Gap, and the few wild places left on the shore.)

Anyway, by sheer coincidence, our trip coincided with the spawning horseshoe crabs. ( I wanted them looking for and IDing shellfish and seaweed. . .) Quickly tossed the lesson plan so we could focus on the biology in front of us. Best class "I" ever "taught".

Jode, thanks for bringing this up. Good memories, and great discussion.

Steve, is there a link to that Sage Grouse video?
 
Sure thing Jeff.....Jersey can be iffy in a lot of ways, but if you get below the surface and see the history, both human and natural we have some great resources that still remain. ( as you found out.)

Tides are perfect, so for me, I think a day progging on the bay is in order for tomorrow!
 
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