Mentor/s

Professor Jennifer Mattei

Participation Type

Poster

Abstract

The American horseshoe crab obtains food resources, spawns and has nursery habitats in our urban coastal seas. The east coast of the US and particularly Long Island Sound (LIS) is dominated by human activity and characterized by armored shorelines, high nutrient loads, large fluctuations in algal and bacteria populations, increased levels of pollutants (e.g. heavy metals and pesticides), hypoxia and relatively low pH. The LIS watershed harbors more than 9 million people and this urban sea has been significantly modified by human use. We have found that the horseshoe crab population in LIS is reproducing well below its maximum rate with the recruitment of newly molted adults ranging from 5.6 to 12% of the spawning population on sampled beaches. One- to three- year-old juvenile horseshoe crabs have low population densities, with a patchy distribution and are absent from more than half of estuarine habitats surveyed (n = 10). The probable causes are due to legal and illegal overharvest of adults and poor quality nursery habitat (polluted and hypoxic estuaries). Possible solutions include multi-habitat restoration using the living shoreline concept (e.g. beach stabilization, marsh grass planting, and artificial reef installation) for wave abatement, sediment deposition, capping of heavy metals and increased biodiversity. Also, establishing marine protected areas in LIS is imperative to increase recruitment of juvenile horseshoe crabs as well as other ecologically and economically important marine species.

College and Major available

Biology

Location

University Commons

Start Day/Time

4-21-2017 1:00 PM

End Day/Time

4-21-2017 3:00 PM

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Share

COinS
 
Apr 21st, 1:00 PM Apr 21st, 3:00 PM

A Unique Approach to Restoring Coastal Habitats, Cap Heavy Metals, Abate Wave Energy and Allow Successful Horseshoe Crab Spawning

University Commons

The American horseshoe crab obtains food resources, spawns and has nursery habitats in our urban coastal seas. The east coast of the US and particularly Long Island Sound (LIS) is dominated by human activity and characterized by armored shorelines, high nutrient loads, large fluctuations in algal and bacteria populations, increased levels of pollutants (e.g. heavy metals and pesticides), hypoxia and relatively low pH. The LIS watershed harbors more than 9 million people and this urban sea has been significantly modified by human use. We have found that the horseshoe crab population in LIS is reproducing well below its maximum rate with the recruitment of newly molted adults ranging from 5.6 to 12% of the spawning population on sampled beaches. One- to three- year-old juvenile horseshoe crabs have low population densities, with a patchy distribution and are absent from more than half of estuarine habitats surveyed (n = 10). The probable causes are due to legal and illegal overharvest of adults and poor quality nursery habitat (polluted and hypoxic estuaries). Possible solutions include multi-habitat restoration using the living shoreline concept (e.g. beach stabilization, marsh grass planting, and artificial reef installation) for wave abatement, sediment deposition, capping of heavy metals and increased biodiversity. Also, establishing marine protected areas in LIS is imperative to increase recruitment of juvenile horseshoe crabs as well as other ecologically and economically important marine species.

 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.