Scientists have recently urged the Odisha government to immediately come up with a robust protection mechanism before the Horseshoe crabs (living fossil) becomes extinct due to destructive fishing practices.
About Horseshoe crabs:
The horseshoe crab is a marine chelicerate arthropod living in shallow coastal waters on soft sandy or muddy bottoms and spawns mostly on intertidal beaches at summer-spring high tides.
The Chelicerata is a division within the Arthropoda, containing animals such as spiders, scorpions, harvestmen, mites and ticks. Like all arthropods, they have a segmented body and segmented limbs and a thick chitinous cuticle called an exoskeleton.
It is known as a marine ‘living fossil’.
There are four extant horseshoe crab species:
The American horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus) along the eastern coast of the USA and in the Gulf of Mexico,
The tri-spine horseshoe crab (Tachypleus tridentatus),
The coastal horseshoe crab (Tachypleus gigas)
The mangrove horseshoe crab (Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda)
The last three are Indo-Pacific species found mainly in the coastal waters of India, Southeast Asia, China and Japan.
Odisha is the largest habitat of horseshoe crabs in India.
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