BY MICHELE S. BYERS
COMMENTARY
Humans weren’t the only ones shaken up when Superstorm Sandy tore through New Jersey last fall. Wind, waves and storm surge re-sculpted much of the state’s coastline, with potentially disastrous consequences for two of our state’s iconic critters: horseshoe crabs and the Red Knot sandpipers whose lives depend on them.
The Red Knot is the ultra-marathoner of shore birds, migrating each spring from one end of the Earth to the other, from its winter home in Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America to its summer breeding grounds in the North American Arctic. The most crucial stop in this incredible journey is a layover in New Jersey’s Delaware Bayshore to gorge on eggs laid by horseshoe crabs.
