Scuffs where horseshoe crabs had made love during night covered the sand at Lazy Point. Their fevered trails crisscrossed the beach. Plovers and turnstones probed for eggs along the edge of the water.
A short walk from my parked car, I saw a set of horseshoe crabs buried in the foreshore gravel with just the narrowest part of their domed carapaces above the sand. Tire ruts from trucks were everywhere, though, and I worried that the pair might be crushed before the next high tide got them to scuttle away. I carried the horsefoots, as my father called them, back to the water. The male, smaller, quickly moved away; the female remained close to the shore, perhaps driven by instinct to stay close to the egg-laying place of her preference.
Horseshoe crabs are very particular about where they gather to reproduce; they have their own beaches where, on the full and new moons, they creep ashore at high tide. Females are much larger than males, which can be identified both by habit — they earnestly follow the females around — and by a convex place on their shells curved to fit neatly on the females’ backs. At the other end of the narrow beach there was another semi-hidden pair, buried in a tire rut. I carried them to the water, too.
It seems to me that the town trustees, who manage the beach at Napeague Harbor, might want to block four-wheel-drive trucks from the beach during the horsefoots’ spawning period. I know beach driving is still sacrosanct in East Hampton, but this particular beach being only about a few hundred yards from end to end is plenty accessible without having to drive on it.
Coastwise, horseshoe crabs have declined by about two-thirds from their original, pre-industrial population, scientists say. There is an effort to have them listed as an endangered species, in fact. Horseshoe crabs go back twice as far as the dinosaurs, 450 million years. For that alone, they deserve a little more respect.