Benefits of the horseshoe crab watch in Punta Gorda

September is the Florida Horseshoe Crab Watch at Ponce de Leon Park in Punta Gorda, and volunteers are getting crabby.

Volunteers will count how many crabs there are and hand that over to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission so they can update models and track movements.

Just about anywhere along the shore in Florida, look closer and you’ll see it: a horseshoe crab.

They’ve been here for a while.

“They have existed pretty much unchanged for about 400 million years, so before dinosaurs were even here,” said Audrey with the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Commission.

The University of Florida is doing a study to learn as much as they can about horseshoe crabs to know where they are, and if they’re declining.

“They are really, really tough. They can survive really bad water quality conditions,” said Berlynna Heres, a database analyst with FWC, “so if we are seeing their populations decline, we really need to investigate because it can be an indicator that a bigger problem is happening here.”

There is no sign of that yet. That’s why the University of Florida is doing the study, and they’re hoping you can help.

“We couldn’t do this with state employees alone, couldn’t even come close, because it takes a long time, it takes an incredible amount of people to accomplish,” said Heres.

The study will also help protect areas that horseshoe crabs call home from becoming an area for development.

“When these shorelines are looking to get developed or, better yet, looking to have restoration happen at them, the state can definitively say, ‘Oh, this is a very important spawning site. We need to protect this area’,” said Heres.

It’s a long-term study, and some volunteers have already signed up to help.

Volunteer training will be held Sept. 21 at the Punta Gorda Library, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The people involved in the study remind you not to disturb the horseshoe crabs, especially when they’re partially buried in the sand, which means they are mating.