Bled

In 1964, Limulus amoebocyte lysate (LAL), developed from horseshoe crab blood, was discovered as an effective pryogen test. Limulus blood reacts to endotoxins by forming a gel. The LAL test, constructed from horseshoe crab amoebocytes, has become the standard test in the United States, Europe, and Asia to test pharmaceutical injectables and pharmaceutical insertables for biomedical and veterinary uses. Without it, endotoxins could contaminate all of our laboratory studies, our bodies, and other nonhuman animal bodies. We’ve made horseshoe crabs indispensable to our human and veterinary biomedicine. We need their blood, and as health care demand grows, we will need more and more. I explain how blood donations are detrimental to the crabs. Furthermore, I explain how the LAL test is a not lifesaving test but is instead used for quality control. Even with all of this information and the viability of a synthetic alternative, the bureaucracy surrounding the procedure for switching to the synthetic alternative will prevent the switch from happening until most of the crabs have died. They are not valued like humans are; they are instead valued for their use to humans and will be valued that way until they are used up.

Amplexed

Monitoring, describing and interpreting horseshoe crab reproduction makes up a large portion of research on the species. Based primarily on my fieldwork in Cedar Key, Florida, during a horseshoe crab tagging event as they come to shore to spawn, I use a Baradian analysis to consider the cuts humans (specifically scientists and myself) make to categorize horseshoe crab reproductive behavior.

Endangered

If you’re going to consider the horseshoe crab, you need to take a few steps back (and a deep breath) to understand the big picture and context of the its existence, the implications of being labeled Endangered, and of even being identified as a species. And with that there’s the destroyer-rescuer role that humans play. I explain human enchantment with the horseshoe crab and at the same time relate it directly to some very hard truths.

Enmeshed

The concept of the mesh is introduced to describe the analysis of horseshoe crabs, their environment, and the humans with whom they interact (both directly and indirectly). This network of entangled species and objects changes as time progresses, both as a result of human involvement but also without human involvement. Humans are no more essential than horseshoe crabs—but the focus does seem to be on the human impact on horseshoe crabs’ reproduction and survival in the context of global warming and rising sea levels. And humans, and their highways, are prioritized over the crabs. Here I call into question our tendency to take this for granted, and I encourage humans to be more mindful about our interconnectedness and the repercussions of our actions over the enmeshed web of species and environment.

Conclusion

Apprehending horseshoe crabs in unexpected places fuels a deeper understanding of the value of projects such as this one. This chapter examines the different lingering questions at the end of this work in radical empiricism and suggests what the horseshoe crab has to offer us.

Fieldwork in the Mudflats

This chapter introduces the book by providing some background about the horseshoe crabs and presenting the foundation of theory (and paradigm). I stress that I am approaching the book from a posthumanist standpoint that emphasizes interspecies interactions as essential to creating all species (“becoming” as an evolving process). This chapter gives some information about the methods I use and my subjects of study, and it lays out the rest of the book.