It's horseshoe crab spawning season in Delmarva, and Host Our Coast follows wildlife expert, Jeff Gordon as he takes us along the shoreline of Delaware's Slaughter Beach, where shorebirds are frantically buffeting the buffet of horseshoe crab eggs, before their strenuous miles-long migration up north.

Every year around this time, hundreds of thousands of heavily-armored troops with tails trudge up the muddy tides, laying their mines by the millions. Horseshoe crabs, are revered by many, not necessarily for it's life-saving medical benefits, the utility of becoming bait in eel and conch fisheries, or as a bountiful food resource for about a dozen species of shorebirds, but because they care about this ancient marine animal as they would another human being worthy of our respect.

Visitors are usually inclined to admire the unique shorebirds that come to the beaches of Delaware Bay, with little regard to Horseshoe Crabs, which residents and conservationists argue, have a much more interesting story - a story of being faced with constant adversities, and triumphing through their unrelenting perseverance.

Horseshoe Crabs have proven to be incredibly adaptive, considering they have managed to harmonize with their environment for over 450 million years. One may just be able to see a part of their own struggle in these remarkable creatures heralded as true survivors; coming to shore every year, often injured and scarred, but undeterred as they lay their foundation for future generations.

Horseshoe crabs start out at less than a half-inch, spending their first two summers on the intertidal flats and sporadically molting as they take on size and heft before heading toward deeper waters. They become full grown adults by about age 11, at which point they come to shore at the end of spring every year to spawn and start the cycle all over again.

Now, while these horseshoe crabs lay their eggs, they face an adversity of the winged kind. Every year, shorebirds such as Red Knots, Ruddy Turnstones, and Semi-Palmated Sandpipers feed, almost exclusively on Horseshoe Crab eggs during their stopover as they make marathon leaps and bounds across continents, making a couple stops, one of which is Delaware Bay, where they fuel up, bulk up and charge up for their grueling iron-man-esque flight to their breeding grounds in the arctic. Without the masses of Horseshoe Crabs that throng the beaches of Delaware Bay, many of these birds would be a lost cause.

Speaking of lost causes, we would all be lost causes had it not been for Horseshoe Crabs. Every time you get a vaccination, or get medically treated, the purity of the chemical composition of the medication you're receiving was first tested using Horseshoe Crab blood, which is prized for how simple and consistent it is at detecting the slightest impurities by clotting.

To find out more about Horseshoe Crabs, and their conservation, click here.

Many thanks to Glenn Gauvry of ERDG (Ecological Research & Development Group) for the invaluable information he provided us, and to Jeffrey Gordon, Expert Birder, for taking us on the tour along Slaughter Beach for the making of the video.

Written by Errol Webber. Video by Errol Webber.