These small birds migrate 15,000 miles every year, from the tip of South America to breed in the Canadian Arctic. Each spring for thousands of years, the migrating the Red Knots depended on horseshoe crab eggs for food in Delaware Bay. Over the past 40 years, the horseshoe crab population crashed due to heavy harvesting for use as bait for the fishing industry. With their stopover food supply gone, each year fewer and fewer made it to successfully breed in the north. In Oct. 2023, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) decided to stop the 2024 bait harvest of female horseshoe crabs in Delaware Bay. This is only a momentary halt.