It was an exciting and astonishing season for the Menunkatuck Project Limulus team. Last year we tagged a total of 370 horseshoe crabs, so when Professor Mark Beekey of Sacred Heart University asked me how many tags I thought I could use this year, I optimistically said 600. Little did I know that I would have to request more tags twice during the season. We ended up tagging a grand total of 975 crabs!
One may conclude from this information that there were more crabs at our beaches this year. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily the case. One reason for the increase in numbers tagged was having more independent taggers this year than last year. Another reason was the extra days the group spent on the beaches during the peak of the spawning season. Between May 25th. and May 28th. we tagged 281 crabs. These were not regular survey days. A third reason why we tagged more crabs was because we had more well trained volunteers this year who were able to tag the crabs as we counted them during the survey of the beach.
Guilfordʼs Project Limulus team surveyed the two beaches at Indian Cove 24 times between May 1st. and July 1st. We also assembled at the Cove beaches 5 extra times for tagging only. We had 8 independent taggers who covered most of the beaches in Guilford. We were more likely to find crabs during the day this year than last year, but we continued to find the most at night. We counted the first crabs of the season on May 15th. The peak of the season was May 27th., when we tagged 110 in one night.
Here is the final data for the 2011 horseshoe crab spawning season:
We counted a total of 171 crabs during the 24 standardized surveys conducted at the 2 Indian Cove beaches. We tagged a total of 975 crabs at Guilford beaches including Indian Cove, Joshua Cove, Shell Beach, Chittenden Beach, Jacobs Beach, and Grass Island. We recorded 262 recaptures (crabs which have been previously tagged). Last year we only found 26 recaptures!
I am grateful to the 40 plus active volunteers for their help and enthusiasm. It was a very successful season and we had a lot of fun. I look forward to seeing all of you next year.
We are always happy to have new volunteers. If you are interested, please contact
judy@menunkatuck.org. For more information about Project Limulus, go to info@projectlimulus.org.
Total crabs tagged in 2010- 370
Total crabs tagged in 2011- 975
Total recaptures in 2010- 26
Total recaptures in 2011- 262
Total crabs counted during surveys in 2010- 151
Total crabs counted during surveys in 2011- 171
2010 Indian Cove Public Beach
Single males-4
Single females-1
Pairs-30
Female with 2 males-2
Female with 3 males-0
Total crabs-71
2011
Single males-19
Single females-9
Pairs-41
Female with 2 males-7
Female with 3 males-1
Total crabs-135
2010 Indian Cove Private Beach
Single males-13
Single females- 4
Pairs-19
Female with 2 males-3
Female with 3 males-4
Total crabs-80
2011
Single males-6
Single females-1
Pairs-13
Female with 2 males-1
Female with 3 males-0
Total crabs-36
Total crabs counted- 36
