Cape Cod

We woke to bright blue skies and a sea of molten silver. After a quick breakfast we were down on the beach for a beach-combing/exercise session. It was quite quiet and lovely in the sunshine. 

The main photograph shows one of our finds (we didn’t remove it).  I asked someone and they said it was a horseshoe crab. To me it looks more like a prototype for Alien or Dr Who. This particular shell was empty but one of the extras shows the underside of a shell with the ‘crab’ in place. Apparently horseshoe crabs aren’t crabs at all but are distantly related to spiders. They are also very old in evolutionary terms, pre-dating the dinosaurs and they moult releasing their shells and developing another.

Later we went to a beachside wildlife centre and had further discussions with one of the volunteers. He said that the horseshoe crabs were collected for their blood. It sounded unlikely until I remembered ‘the LAL test’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limulus_amebocyte_lysate . The LAL test is something with which I am familiar from my days in the pharmaceutical industry. It’s used to check that anything given by injection is free from harmful toxins. And sure enough these poor animals are collected and bled for their blood cells. They are returned to the sea after making their ‘donations’ but there is an inevitable loss and apparently populations along the coast of New England and further south are dwindling, not least because of all the ‘LAL’ required to test the thousands of recent batches of covid vaccine. I felt quite sorry for the humble horseshoe crab.

There were lots of other interesting wildlife on the beach including the perching cormorants and a very strange conglomeration on a shell. Whatever it was it was alive and moving. The articulating leg lost from something  was also quite fascinating in its intricacy. 

We had another beach walk in the evening and I photographed the sunset but it wasn’t as dramatic as the day before. 

My best photograph of the day (see extra) is of my favourite ‘wildlife’. It was sent to me by the lady who is feeding her. She is well and I am hoping will be pleased to see us when we are back on Wednesday.