Focus: River Time, Horseshoe Crabs & Ducks & Weekend Weather

We’re on the cusp of summertime and the livin’ is prime for some river time and communing with the neighborhood ducks and prehistoric horseshoe crabs.

Yes, it’s also horseshoe crab spawning season and, while they’re not in danger of extinction, environmentalists champion their breeding. They’re amazing critters dubbed living fossils, as they predate dinosaurs, having survived practically unchanged for nearly 400 million years.

Did you know?

• Horseshoe crabs are not, in fact, crabs. They look more like them than their closer relatives, spiders and scorpions and have 10 legs that they use to dig in and walk along the ocean/river floors.

• They have gills, muscles and abdomens and a tail, dubbed a “telson,” which is not a stinger or anything dangerous. They use it to flip themselves over if they end up on their three-sectioned backs.

• They have a brain, heart, mouth, glands, nervous system and the largest of their nine eyes all in their head protected by a large plate that looks like armor. That set of eyes helps them find mates. Yes, they have nine eyes.

• The other eyes help them to move and calculate moonlight changes.

• You’ll only see horseshoe crabs on shores when they are spawning, which is now.

So, next time your’e down by the river, contemplate that crazy connection to these walking fossils and the accidental time capsule you’re in down by the river. Now, that’s retro! The past always reaches out to reconnect us — even on a Rumson-Fair Haven river walk. They’ve got their nine eyes on us, too.

Oh, and if you see a tagged horseshoe crab, let the American Littoral Society know. Click here. Horseshoe crabs onlhe spawning season of the horseshoe crab is the only time they come ashore.

For now, though, find out a little about the weather this Memorial Day weekend …