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FALMOUTH, Mass. - The horseshoe crabs from Narragansett Bay wave their tails and legs feebly as workers wheel them in big barrels into a laboratory where everyone wears white coats and hats and all the tools are repeatedly sterilized.
One at a time, the technicians pick up each crab, wipe its shell clean and wedge it in a plastic rack. Then they insert a big, .13-gauge horse needle through the joint between the crab's tail and round, armored body and pierce its heart.
Pale, blue blood pours out into a beaker below.
In coming months the blood from each crab will produce $250 worth of a medical product unlike any other in the world. Technicians will refine enzymes from the blood and package them into a powder used to test for impurities in virtually every drug made for intravenous injections.
"There are few people in the country who have not benefited from these crabs," says Michael E. Dawson, senior vice president of Associates of Cape Cod Inc., as he looks over row after row of crabs giving up their blood like some science-fiction version of a Red Cross donation center.
During the last 25 years, Associates has grown into a multimillion dollar company as it quietly bleeds crabs and sends them back alive to the waters where they were caught. Because it's springtime and horseshoe crabs are abundant, the lab is running seven days a week, counting on 40,000 crabs from Narragansett Bay and another 60,000 from Cape Cod.
But now, for the first time, executives here worry about a declining crab population and the increasingly heated debate over what to do.
Pressed by conservationists who insist horseshoe crabs are severely overfished for conch and eel bait, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission voted in February to require East Coast states to reduce their catches by 25 percent. (Crabs caught and released for the medical industry would be exempt.)
The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management missed a May 1 deadline for instituting cutbacks in the local crab catch and it's the only state that still hasn't implemented conservation rules.
Officials will decide in the next few days whether to impose emergency measures before the spring spawning period ends in a few weeks.
"I think we have been as aggressive as the situation and the time frame would have allowed," says DEM associate director Malcolm Grant. He adds that Rhode Island's catch is small compared to every other state.
But a spokesman for a national environmental group charged that the DEM is doing too little. "The DEM is deliberately presiding over the virtual wiping out of your horseshoe crab population in Rhode Island," said Perry Plumart, of the National Audubon Society. "They are supposed to have those regulations in effect by now."
Meanwhile, local fishermen are on edge because of an incident over the Memorial Day weekend. Two people driving a car with New York license plates allegedly opened up a holding pen in Bristol owned by fisherman John Ramos. They released about 200 crabs he planned to use for eel bait.
Ramos said yesterday he tried to stop the two but they wouldn't back down. One insisted "the crabs belong to nature."
"Next time this happens I'm going to go out there with my machete and cut the crabs up right in front of them," said Ramos. "The only thing endangered around here are the fishermen. I haven't seen any differences in the crab population."
Environmental police at the DEM are investigating, according to Chief Steven Hall.
One thing is clear about the Narragansett Bay crabs shipped to Falmouth, they're a lot muddier than the ones caught on the Cape.
Thomas J. Novitsky, the company's chief executive officer, and Dawson, proudly gave a tour Wednesday of their production plant in busy, downtown Falmouth.
The work is done in a one-story, wood-sided building that could be an office for dentists or real-estate brokers. But inside, air scrubbers, ovens and vacuum devices keep the laboratories cleaner than a hospital.
The cleanliness is necessary because the crabs produce enzymes that react to the presence of endotoxins — components of bacteria that can be toxic to humans — at levels of as little as half a millionth of a gram.
"Can you see it?" asks Dawson, as he hands over a vial containing the tiny quantity of endotoxin. No one could.
The enzymes drawn from the crabs' blood create a product called Limulus amebocite lysate. Limulus is the genus that includes horseshoe crabs. Amebocites are the crabs' blood cells. And lysate is the process by which they are broken open to extract the needed enzymes.
(The horseshoe crabs can't bleed to death, Novitsky said. When tapped in the laboratory, they lose at most 30 percent of their blood, then they stop bleeding. Some die during the bleeding, but Novitsky said losses are minor.)
When the lysate comes in contact with endotoxins, it creates a clot that's readily visible. Crabs use it to protect themselves from bacteria. Now humans use it to protect their medical supplies.
Discovered nearby at the Marine Biological Laboratory, at first the lysate was just used by scientists to guarantee the purity of their experiments.
Uses broadened dramatically in 1976 when lysate determined that some lots of influenza vaccine were contaminated with endotoxins that were not detected by other tests. Soon, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration required the use of lysate to test all drug products.
Associates went into business. Several other companies make the same product, but Associates is the only New England manufacturer.
On Wednesday, 700 crabs from Narragansett Bay and 300 from the Cape are delivered. The staff keeps them separate so they can be returned to their own waters.
The company pays from $1 to $3 for each crab to a handful of key suppliers from Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The crabs must be healthy and the company won't accept any that have already been bled that year.
Last year it started tagging the crabs so it could try to learn more about their populations.
The company received a scare earlier this year when federal officials tried to stop the company from using crabs caught in its refuges. The company sued and reversed the order. Now it's worried that Rhode Island won't take the steps necessary to protect its crabs.
"We're concerned," says Novitsky. "We want to make sure some sense is made out of this so we can ensure the supply. We are concerned that the bait industry has gotten too big."
Recently the lab determined that leftover crab plasma seems to contain the attractants that make the crabs popular bait for eel and conch fishermen. Now, the company is offering to give the plasma away to anyone who can figure out how to use it for bait.
The company tries to return the crabs to the water within 30 hours. So yesterday the Rhode Island crabs were trucked back home.
Fisherman John Eliason, who caught the crabs, backs up to the water's edge and tosses them back in, two at a time.
He asks that the location not be disclosed, because he doesn't want to be harassed by the activists who struck in Bristol.
He caught all 700 crabs in one night, and insists the crabs are more numerous than they were five years ago.
"We don't have a problem with our crabs," Eliason says. "We have a problem with people getting involved with the crabs."
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