Paddling the ICW near Bull’s Bay,

“Put down your paddle, get your camera ready, and be quiet.”  I whispered to Jane.  “ I saw a whole flock of shorebirds pitch into the marsh near the oyster point on the other side of the inlet.  I’ll try and sneak close enough for you to get some pictures of them.”  Little did I know that there wouldn’t be much sneaking required.  I gently glided and came parallel to the water’s edge while Jane started taking pictures.  We couldn’t believe how close we got to the group who either rooted in the grass and shells or even seemed to be dozing.

It was late April and early May in 2007.  We were camping at the Buck Hall Recreation Area between McClellanville and Awendaw, SC, and from their boat ramp had been paddling the Intercoastal Waterway (ICW), Bull’s Bay, and any creek where we could float a kayak.  By the way, if you head out into Bull’s Bay, be sure you know where you are going and the state of the tides.  There are some places where you can’t even float a kayak at low tide.  Until the encounter with the little shore birds, the most interesting things we’d seen were lots of shallow water sharks (Bonnetheads), other birds, and lots of horseshoe crabs; many of them floating dead near the edge of the marsh.

 This was prime spawning time for the horseshoe crabs, which we learned were not true crabs at all.  But we did not see any spawning  horseshoe crabs in the areas where we paddled – only dead ones.  Many horseshoe crabs died during spawning when they get flipped on their backs by wave action or even by being uprooted by another crab maneuvering for a better position to fertilize eggs laid by a gravid female.  If you ever encounter an upside-down horseshoe crab on the beach, especially during spawning season in April-May in SC, “Just Flip ‘em Over.”  As odd as they look, they will not hurt you and are able to live for some time out of water as long as their hills remain moist.  I’ve been surprised many times when I “flipped” an apparently dead horseshoe crab and watched it trundle back into the water.

When we tried later to learn more about the little birds, we found out they were called “Red Knots” and are one of, if not the longest flying bird of all during their annual migration.  They spend their winters in Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America, and breed in the northern hemisphere above the artic circle.  This means that in the spring, they fly up to 10,000 miles while following coastlines and crossing the open oceans in between the two continents.  No wonder they weren’t in a hurry to put distance between us and them as we sat there in the kayak.Jane didn’t have the fanciest of cameras with her, but was excited as she snapped picture after picture of the little birds.

We also learned later that the birds favor horseshoe crab eggs to give them energy for the long migration.  So they were rooting in the shells for food and we don’t know if there were horseshoe crab eggs on that point or not.  We rather suspect that they were feeding opportunistically at this point and that the crabs were most likely spawning on sandier spots.

So why were there so many dead crabs around?  Well, they could have been accidental up-endings, or they could have been inadvertent losses from medical research.  The crabs are captured, bled for medical research due to a copper-based blood with unique clotting properties, and returned to the area where they were captured.  Most of the released crabs survive, but a goodly number do not recover from being “bled.”  These losses appear to be minimal compared to the crabs harvested for use as bait in eel and whelk traps.

Over-harvesting horseshoe crabs is believed to be a direct cause in decline of the Red knot population.  Delaware Bay has a much higher number of spawning horseshoe crabs, and fishermen decimated their populations before coming under stricter regulation.  Not coincidentally, Red Knots and numerous other shore birds converge on Delaware Bay at spawning time for the crabs, and despite a significant population decline in Red Know flocks, they are not considered a threatened species for now.

In Florida, horseshoe crabs can spawn year-round and usually, as in SC, at times of the month with the highest tides.  On another paddling excursion in September 2008 near Carrabelle, FL, we had the good fortune to see horseshoe crabs spawning on about 200 yards of sandy beach. Michael made it his personal mission everyday to go down to that beach after high tide and flip the upside-down crabs over and start them back to the water.  Of no surprise, his company on those visits to the beach was a large flock of shorebirds that were pillaging the sands for horseshoe crab eggs.

For more on reporting of spotting of  horseshoe crabs see: http://www.horseshoecrab.org/act/sighting.html