Crash: A Tale of Two Species

Each year a small shorebird must make a 10,000-mile journey from the southern tip of South America to its nesting grounds in the Arctic- one of the longest migrations on earth. This pocket-sized long distance traveler times its migration precisely to coincide with the annual spawning of one of earth's most ancient creatures: the horse-shoe crab. It's horseshoe crab eggs on the Delaware Bay that fuel the little birds epic journey to the Arctic. In the 1990s the fishing industry discovered that horseshoe crabs make good bait for eel and conch. As these industries boomed, horseshoe crabs were collected by the truckload... and red knot numbers started to crash. The story of the red knot and the horseshoe crab is a living example of how every species is interconnected- each one important, no matter how big or small. As the fate of two extraordinary creatures teeters on the edge, humankind must grapple with the economics and politics of extinction.