Inside the volunteer effort — and legal challenge — to help protect horseshoe crabs in Maine

MAINE PUBLIC • June 18, 2026

What has twelve legs, ten eyes and one tail? It's not a creature from science fiction — it's the horseshoe crab, a so-called living fossil that some scientists say is now threatened with extinction. That's at the center of a lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity alleging the federal government has so far failed to include them for protection under the Endangered Species Act. Downeast, where the Friends of Taunton Bay have been monitoring horseshoe crabs for nearly three decades, the data show a clear trend. "The decline was gentle for awhile, and then somewhat precipitous," says the group's Frank Dorsey. He says they used to find more than 100 a day, but the number dropped by more than half with the arrival of invasive green crabs, which eat horseshoe crabs' eggs and can destroy eelgrass habitat.