Few of us realize just how valuable the horseshoe
crab is…
Bob Gault: When I first started 37 years ago,
we were allowed to harvest them.
There was no recording.
There was nothing and they became fair game
and I was involved with selling them for bait
and then a doctor came down and he said that
if I didn’t sell bait crabs anymore he would
be interested in the laboratory.
Jerry Gault: Normal fishing is you catch it,
you ice it, and you deliver it to the table
and you eat it.
The horseshoe crab we actually catch them,
take them to the lab, and they bleed them,
and we bring it back and release them, so
we’re borrowing the crabs is really what
we’re doing.
Jerry Gault: What do you say we go unload
this?
Bob Gault: Alright.
Crabs that are “borrowed” end up a couple
of hours away at the Endosafe Laboratories
in Charleston.
Here in this alien world, they’re given
a rigorous cleaning, to prep them for process
ahead.
For the past thirty years, the biomedical
industry has been mining the medical equivalent
of gold.
Endosafe is one of only four labs in the world
that produces a derivative of horseshoe crab
blood.
Their blood has a clotting agent that’s
used to detect minute levels of bacteria.
But what’s truly surprising is the color.
The crab’s blue blood is an evolutionary
gift that’s helped them survive the eons.
Lab Tech: Male or female?
Norman Wainwright : A small male would be
good.
Dr. Norman Wainwright has been working with
horseshoe crabs for most of his career, studying
the remarkable properties of their blood.
Norman Wainwright: The beautiful blue color
is a result of its blood containing copper
as an oxygen carrying pigment instead of hemoglobin,
which contains iron.
…I’m adding a suspension of e-coli bacteria.
At the first sign of bacteria, the crab’s
blood forms a protective clot.
Norman Wainwright: Look at that.
This is perfect.
This is the horseshoe crab cells protecting
the animal from infection.
Any type of leakage of seawater into their
blood system would trigger this response,
seal the wound and there actually are proteins
in the clot itself that kill the bacteria.
They are almost primitive antibiotics.
The phenomenon caught the attention of biomedical
companies in the 70’s.
They’ve been putting it to work for us ever
since.
Up to 1/3 of the crab’s blood is removed
during the process – yet most of them survive.
One quart of horseshoe crab blood is worth
about $15,000.
It’s a multi-million dollar industry.
