By Jennifer Uscher
 

It’s near midnight when Bob Brozek steps through the rolling surf at Delaware’s Big Stone Beach, suited up in knee-high rubber boots, a windbreaker and a headlamp. Hours earlier he finished his shift at the Valero oil refinery 25 miles away in Delaware City, where he works as an inspector, climbing inside giant storage tanks and boilers to check for cracks and defects. 

On this misty May night, Brozek has strong-armed a team of his buddies from the refinery to forgo their usual weekend activities in favor of helping out with a massive environmental monitoring project. Joe Matlack, 60, dressed in a protective Tyvek suit, and Jamie Arpino, 49, in neon-yellow waterproof pants and rubber boots, trudge across the sand with the 55-year-old Brozek. They haul along essential tools for the evening—a white rope with knots tied every 3 feet, a clipboard and a collection of plastic pipes.

Farther up the beach, Lois Davis watches the progress of Brozek’s crew. For the past four years, she has coordinated Nature Conservancy volunteers helping to count horseshoe crabs at Big Stone Beach, which is part of the Conservancy’s Milford Neck Preserve, and at the adjoining Bennett’s Beach. Each spring, during all 12 evening high tides in May and June, more than 200 people turn out to help. “There’s a lot of concern about the crab,” Davis says.

As the high tide rolls in wave by wave, hundreds of horseshoe crabs appear out of the foamy surf, dragging their bodies up the beach in an annual ritual known as a spawning aggregation. The light from the team’s headlamps outlines olive-green shells, sharp stingerlike tails and dark unblinking eyes advancing up the beach.

The team moves into action, laying down a giant square fashioned out of white plastic pipes. Holding the clipboard, Brozek tallies up the number of male and female crabs inside the plastic quadrant positioned in the sand. When he finishes counting, the team picks up the square and uses the knots on the rope to measure a few yards down the beach, where they begin another tally. “We’re seeing way, way more crabs this year,” says Brozek, struggling to avoid stepping on their shells. “Last year, we were happy if we got three or four when we threw down the square.”

Brozek has participated in the crab counts for the past two years. While he’s quick to point out that he’s no tree-hugger, he and his co-workers from the refinery are happy to help out this bottom-dwelling underdog. And though Brozek says “the whales and seals get all the glory,” in the past decade this creature, which vaguely resembles an old Buick, has become a sort of mascot for the mid-Atlantic seaboard. Delaware even voted to make the horseshoe the state’s official marine animal.

Increased interest in the crab is no accident. Studies indicate its numbers had plummeted in recent years, placing the crab at the center of an ongoing series of public debates, legislative battles and legal challenges over its management. As it turns out, beneath that tanklike exterior lies a vulnerable creature whose well-being has widespread ramifications for ecosystems and economies alike—and even for human health. Now, more than ever, researchers are counting on volunteers like Brozek’s team to help them round up the data they need to get the crab population back on an even keel.

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Nature picture credits: Photos © Christian Ziegler