On Tuesday (June 2nd) we helped Alison Leschen, the head of the horseshoe crab fishery for the Massachusetts Department of Marine Fisheries, with a study she's doing on the effects of bleeding, transport, and captivity on horseshoe crabs. We met at Paw Wah Pond at 5:30 AM and Jay Harrington (a fisherman licensed for biomedical collecting) brought us 300 female crabs to sort. They only collect females for bleeding and it was quite surprising to see so many in one place since we see so few out in the field. It definitely gave us an idea of where all of our females are going!
So, the crabs needed to be sorted into three random groups, one which was going to be bled, one which was going to be held in captivity for two weeks, and one which I can't remember (lol). So our job was to take the crabs from barrels, measure them, and Alison told us a random group to put them in based on a data sheet she came up with. After we got our group number, we put a color-coded band on the crab's tail and then placed them in the appropriate bucket. We did all this inside of a fishy smelling refrigerated truck to keep the crabs from drying out. And, yes, I have pictures!
A large female being measured on a block designed by Alison especially for horseshoe crab measuring...
Banding the crabs...
A finished bucket of crabs...
Chris' favorite bucket...
The finished 300 crabs...
Our group plus Alison's intern, the one not smiling (lol)...
So that was pretty fun. We've got our full moon surveys this weekend and hopefully we'll get a good amount of tagging done during the week.
On Wednesday (June 3rd) we went to the Wellfleet Mass Audubon building to get training on finding Diamondback Terrapin nests. We'll be helping them out doing nesting surveys. In my next post, I'll put some pictures of our training. But for now, that's all!
Great pictures! Does the bleeding seem to impact the horseshoe crabs in any way?
ReplyDeleteGreat information. Can't wait to hear about the turtles. Keep the pictures coming, How about one of you in your dress of the day.
ReplyDeleteSee you in a few weeks.