Abstract
The New Jersey Aquaculture Innovation Center (AIC) at Rutgers University has instituted a program to enhance the population of the American horseshoe crab Limulus polyphemus in the Delaware Bay Estuary (DBE) by using aquaculture at the earliest stages in its life history, when losses are greatest and production costs are minimal. Located on the Cape May Canal, the AIC pumps provide both raw and treated (sand-filtered, UV-sterilized) DBE water throughout the facility. Eggs of L. polyphemus were collected from local, sub-optimal nesting beaches impacted by coastal development and rising sea level, and hatched in jars normally used for trout eggs. A hatching system was built that uses recirculating treated seawater and a header tank to provide constant, independently controllable flow through 12 jars. An experiment performed using the hatching system tested the effects of egg stocking density and seawater flow rates on hatching success. The results showed highest hatching success at high egg densities with low flow rates. Hatchlings were reared in downweller silos in a raceway tank with flow-through, raw seawater. Half of the hatchlings were allowed to feed on organic matter in the incoming raw seawater while the others were given a supplement of Artemia nauplii. Statistically, there was no difference in growth or development between the treatments. After 10 weeks, most hatchlings were at the 3rd instar stage. This suggests that aquaculture of the early stages of L. polyphemus, utilizing natural estuarine DBE water, maximizes the impact to the future population by protecting eggs and early instars, the most vulnerable life stages, at minimal cost.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Dr. Matthew Landau, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, who designed the instar developmental index and did all of the statistical analyses. We also thank Drs. Margaret Brennan-Tonetta and Bradley Hillman from the Agriculture Experimental Station at Rutgers University for program support. A DuPont Clear Into the Future grant partially funded this project.
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Landau, B.J., Jones, D.R., Zarnoch, C.B., Botton, M.L. (2015). Development of Aquaculture Methods to Enhance Horseshoe Crab Populations: An Example from Delaware Bay, U.S.A.. In: Carmichael, R., Botton, M., Shin, P., Cheung, S. (eds) Changing Global Perspectives on Horseshoe Crab Biology, Conservation and Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19542-1_30
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19542-1_30
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