Greetings fellow HSC Monitoring Folks & Friends!

Wow, what a night last Wednesday evening!!! There was so many Horseshoe Crabs it was bringing a tear to my eyes. I am not sure why there were so many crabs out all at once. Perhaps since they couldn’t mate on Tuesday, May 17th due to the higher than normal high tides, there was a great push by the Horseshoe Crabs to make up for lost time. Though this is just a speculation.

I am sorry for the delay in getting the HSC results emailed to everyone. I wanted to take my time and make I had the right data and double-check the numbers with the HSC beach captains.

Below are the final crab numbers for Wednesday, June 1, 2011. It seems that the mouth of Many Mind Creek in Atlantic Highlands had the most crab activity in one place with an amazing 649 crabs counted. Congratulations and appreciation goes to everyone at all five sites. Much obliged to everyone who could make it out last Wednesday evening to help us count & tag crabs. Thanks for volunteering your time!!! We couldn't do this without your help!!!!

I know that a few locations have run out tags. I am working on getting more tags and I am hopeful to have some in place for our next HSC monitoring event.

Please mark your calendars now for our fourth and final HSC monitoring event for 2011. It will take place on Wednesday, June 15th at 8:30pm. I hope you can make it. This has been a very interesting HSC monitoring season for sure!!!!

Thanks & Fair winds,

Joe Reynolds

Co-Chair

Bayshore Watershed Council

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Sandy Hook: Plum Island

Total: 132 crabs

81 single males

1 single female

10 pairs

6 clusters with the largest having 8 males

3 dead males and 3 dead females

Atlantic Highlands: Mouth of Many Mind Creek

Total: 649 crabs

447 single males

8 single females

47 pairs

23 clusters with the largest having 6 males

4 dead crabs: 3 males & 1 unidentified sex

Middletown Township: Leonardo Beach

Total: 354 crabs

288 males

66 single females

38 clusters

These totals include the crabs that were in the clusters.

Union Beach: Conaskonck Point

Total: 84 crabs

28 single males

2 single females

24 pairs

2 clusters

Aberdeen Township: Cliffwood Beach

Total: 480 crabs

390 males total

231 single males

90 females total

0 single females

89 clusters of 2 or more crabs with the largest having 9 males and 1 female

only one cluster was found with more than 1 (2) female crabs in it

57 clusters of 2 crabs only (1 male and 1 female)

found 0 male on male clusters this year other than very brief (few second) encounters

2 dead male crabs

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