{"id":16994,"date":"2017-08-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-14T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-hakamagwp.pantheonsite.io\/news\/out-frying-pan-wetlands"},"modified":"2017-10-27T20:13:38","modified_gmt":"2017-10-27T20:13:38","slug":"out-frying-pan-wetlands","status":"publish","type":"custom_news","link":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/news\/out-frying-pan-wetlands\/","title":{"rendered":"Out of the Frying Pan, into the Wetlands"},"content":{"rendered":"

A crowd gathers at the edge of the brackish water in Malaysia\u2019s Setiu Wetlands. It\u2019s an odd mix of people\u2014fishermen, politicians, scientists\u2014and all of them are staring at their feet, where nearly 100 10-legged, dinner-plate-sized, alien-like creatures are crawling about.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s early on a Sunday morning in July, and they\u2019re here to witness the swarm of horseshoe crabs being released into the wetland on Malaysia\u2019s eastern coast. For these ancient yet imperiled living fossils\u2014they predate dinosaurs by 200 million years, and have changed little since\u2014this was the last stop on a four-day, 250-kilometer journey meant to save them from becoming someone\u2019s dinner. Now, they\u2019re free to swim in Southeast Asia\u2019s first horseshoe crab conservation area.<\/p>\n

Horseshoe crabs are found throughout Asia, from China to Indonesia. The region is home to three of the world\u2019s four species\u2014the Chinese, coastal, and mangrove horseshoe crabs. Some crabs, such as the large Chinese ones, are coveted by the pharmaceutical industry for their endotoxin-detecting blood<\/a>. (The same fate affects the Atlantic horseshoe crab, found along North America\u2019s eastern coast.) But crabs in this part of the world face additional threats from human consumption, habitat loss driven by rapid development, and a lack of government protection.<\/p>\n

The crabs are eaten in some parts of Malaysia and Thailand, where they\u2019re known as Belangkas<\/em> and sell for as much as US $7 each. Female crabs and their eggs are a delicacy. Their meat is added to spicy stir-fries, curries, and stews. But in Malaysia\u2019s east, horseshoe crabs are rarely on the menu. Moving the animals, then, is a simple solution to a complex problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is fast action to save horseshoe crabs from ending up in frying pans,\u201d says biologist Faridah Mohamad, who is co-spearheading the government-funded project.<\/p>\n

To kick-start the project, Mohamad\u2019s team from the University of Malaysia, Terengganu, purchased 100 coastal horseshoe crabs from fishermen down south, where they are eaten. The animals were placed in polystyrene boxes in the back of a pickup truck and transported to the university\u2019s hatchery three hours away. Although one crab died, Mohamad says the crabs are quite hardy and easy to transport. All the team had to do was drive at nighttime and keep the boxes on ice to ensure the crabs remained cool in Malaysia\u2019s 30 \u00b0C heat.<\/p>\n

Upon arriving at the hatchery, the crabs were transferred to large blue tanks to get them acclimatized to the slightly less saline local water. Mohamad\u2019s team then spent the next few days taking measurements\u2014carapace width, tail length, weight, and so on\u2014which will serve as baseline readings for follow-up assessments in the coming months. They then fitted each animal with white, poker-chip-sized tags bearing an ID number and a telephone number for local fishermen to ring when the crabs end up in their nets. With the crabs now set loose on the Setiu Wetlands, the researchers plan to return every week to monitor their growth.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

The conservation team released 99 horseshoe crabs into the Setiu Wetlands. Photo by Sandy Ong<\/p><\/div>\n

Until recently, horseshoe crabs have had few advocates in Asia. In many countries, \u201cconservation is not a very high priority,\u201d says Siu Gin Cheung, a marine biologist from the City University of Hong Kong who is part of a horseshoe crab specialist group with the International Union for Conservation of Nature.<\/p>\n

But in 2011, a scientific conference focused solely on Asian horseshoe crabs was held in Hong Kong. The meeting brought the scattering of horseshoe crab researchers from across the area together for the first time. It was a watershed moment, says Cheung. Prior to that, \u201cpeople in one country didn\u2019t know what others were doing in the rest of Asia.\u201d<\/p>\n

The conference spurred efforts to start protecting horseshoe crabs. Six years on, countries are now protecting the species. Japan, along with Taiwan and China, also have laws in place to safeguard breeding grounds. On a smaller scale, researchers in India and Malaysia are working on captive breeding. Then, there\u2019s Mohamad\u2019s relocation project.<\/p>\n

Over the next two years, Mohamad and her team plan to release 2,000 horseshoe crabs into the Setiu Wetlands, which she hopes will become a natural nursery and foraging area.<\/p>\n

As Mohamad stands at the edge of the mangrove forest, headscarf fluttering gently in the mid-morning breeze, she watches the crabs slip into the gray-green water and burrow into the cool sand below. She says, \u201cHopefully with our effort, we\u2019ll have a few places in Malaysia where we can really focus on getting this animal thriving without threats.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lucky horseshoe crabs get moved away from areas where they\u2019re on the menu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12845,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"acf":{"hero_video_url":null,"hero_video_caption":"","deck":"Lucky horseshoe crabs get moved away from areas where they\u2019re on the menu.","authors_group":[{"by_group":"by","contributors_group":[15692]}],"word_count_override":"","podbean1":"","podbean2":"","redirect":"","geolocation":{"address":"5.6200810, 102.79248","lat":5.620081,"lng":102.79248},"related":[18057,16127],"twitterimage":14383,"facebookimage":13882,"twitterdescription":"","edited":"","factchecked":"","code":"","no_old_story_flag":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/16994"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/custom_news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/16994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20002,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/16994\/revisions\/20002"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/features\/16127"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/videos-visuals\/18057"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}