Dikhyaa Mohanty 
The Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) will tag horseshoe crabs for the first time in Odisha in order to follow their movements for scientific and conservational reasons. At the Balaramgadi beach in the Balasore district on August 18, ZSI, in association with the Odisha Forest department and Fakir Mohan University, Balasore, will attach metallic flipper tags to approximately fifteen horseshoe crabs. The tags would aid in tracking marine species’ migratory paths, according to wildlife biologist and officer-in-charge of ZSI’s western regional center in Pune, Basudev Tripathy. It is known that horseshoe crabs travel thousands of kilometers from their feeding sites to their breeding beaches all over the planet. According to Dr. Tripathy, the tagging will aid in the study of the animals’ migratory paths and feeding grounds.
Horseshoe crabs are found in large numbers throughout Odisha, with the beaches of Balaramgari, Chandipur, and Hukitola having the highest concentrations. One of the oldest living things on the planet, horseshoe crabs have several beneficial medical uses. Blood from crabs is significant to biomedical companies around the world because it includes a substance that causes the blood to clot when bacteria are present. “Horseshoe crab lysate has antimicrobial properties against a variety of diseases.” Thus, there is a great demand for it everywhere,” Tripathy stated. However, unrestricted fishing, habitat loss, and a lack of knowledge among local fishermen about the species’ economic significance pose threats to the horseshoe crab population.
On September 9, 2009, the species was included to Schedule IV of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, making it illegal to catch or kill it. Because local fishermen are ignorant of the species’ enormous economic value, they frequently dump them on the coast when they entangle themselves in fishing nets, which results in high mortality rates. Furthermore, according to Tripathy, there has been a sharp fall in the crab population throughout the Odisha coast as a result of the degradation and loss of the crabs’ mating sites by both natural and human-induced activities.
