SCEE Trip - Endangered Phenomenon: Sex and Gluttony on the Delaware Bay

In the most astonishingly timed--and most endangered--ecological spectacle in the entire Delaware Valley, hundreds of Arctic shorebirds meet up with hordes of horseshoe crabs on Delaware Bay beaches each spring. Migrating from the tip of South America, the shorebirds land--exhausted and starving--at the exact moment that horseshoe crabs haul themselves out of the bay and into the surf to deposit billions of BB-sized eggs. While the crabs engage in an orgy of mating, the birds, including the almost-extinct red knot, crowd beaches to engorge themselves on the fatty eggs which are their ticket to finishing the trip north.


Yet both horseshoe crab and bird populations have been wildly fluctuating, and the red knot seems on the cusp of disappearing. SCEE Executive Director Mike Weilbacher takes you to a variety of beaches in New Jersey searching for the knot and other birds like ruddy turnstones and sandpipers, while unraveling the ecological mystery of knots and their journeys, and horseshoe crabs and their prehistoric story. Space is very limited; preregistration is required.