NOAA Fisheries has denied Endangered Species Act protections for the Atlantic horseshoe crab, a lumbering species whose unique blood is highly valued by the biomedical industry.
Faced with two petitions that urged designating the species as either threatened or endangered, the federal agency instead concluded no ESA listing was warranted.
“There has been improvement in the population status and trends of regional populations from New Hampshire to Florida-Atlantic, with the exception of New York,” NOAA Fisheries announced this week, adding that “the petitions rely on obsolete and incorrect information to infer the current status and trends of the species.”
The agency cited, in part, population surveys in the Delaware Bay region for the species, which is also known as the American horseshoe crab. The 2022 survey estimated the region’s spawning horseshoe crab population to be about 2.6 million, more than twice the estimated population from 2012.
