Courtney, UR- Horseshoe Crabs and Environmental Conditions.

Horseshoe crabs are unique and very important marine organisms and there is so little known information about them. The spawning season on horseshoe crabs is very important because the thousands of eggs laid by eat female is a vital food source to many coastal and marine wildlife! Their numbers are decreasing and in order to help protect them we need to know more about them.

 

The underside of a horseshoe crab- intimidating but completely harmless

 

I have been lucky enough to be able to assist in the annual horseshoe crab surveys with the Marine Discovery Center. These surveys take place during the spawning season which has given me the perfect opportunity to study my IRP, "Is there a relationship between the number of spawning horseshoe crabs at Volusia County sites and the environmental factors such as salinity, water temperature and wind speed?"

 

Mating pair

 

 

 

Horseshoe crabs tend to spawn during high tides that occur during new moons or full moons. Sometimes wind surges can mimic a high tide which can be ideal to spawning conditions. I plan to gather my data by visiting various sites during the right moon and tide conditions. At each survey I plan to take down all environmental conditions in my field notebook such as water temperature, wind temperature, wind speed, etc each time I visit a particular site. I will take a water sample at each site using the correct sampling containers and methods to take back to lab to test the salinity with the optic refractometer. I will also be recording all live horseshoe crabs found, both pairs and lone HSC since the lone HSC are also considered part of the spawning season.

 

My results will compare the number of horseshoe crabs found at each site and the environmental conditions present using various graphs. This will show if there is a correlation between the number of HSC found and the environmental conditions in hopes that maybe we can learn a little bit more about these mysterious creatures.