I found a few interesting facts during the first 10 minutes or so of googling this: 1. Bled crabs die at higher than reported rates (Closer to 20%-25% than the

I found a few interesting facts during the first 10 minutes or so of googling this: 1. Bled crabs die at higher than reported rates (Closer to 20%-25% than the reported ~10%-15%) 2. Bled crabs are back at full blood capacity in a week, and usually fully functional within 2-3 months. 3. This crab blood is seriously important to modern medicine (duh?, but hey its nice to have confirmation) 4. Population numbers are all guesses, and I couldn't find a number which I'd be willing to bet on. Low number was ~600k (mature crabs) high number was several million. 5. Losing blood and being thrown back into the ocean is an order of magnitude better than being chopped up and used as bait. 6. A huge number of these crabs get chopped up and used as bait. They're valued at ~$2 each, as bait :( 7. These crabs lay upwards of 50k eggs per season, per female. A specific bird, the Red Knot, which doesn't seem to doesn't have magic medicinally valuable blood shows up and treats the eggs like an all you can eat buffet. 8. The Red Knot population has been on the rebound, thanks to conservation efforts revolving around the horseshoe crab, and the expanded food supply that offers. Enough other people have gone over the various moral issues with this, and I don't think I'd be able to add much there. To me, the whole situation seems trivial to solve, via enhanced conservation efforts, and heavily reduced bait harvesting. Probably wouldn't hurt to make a few Red Knot omelettes too. Bleed + Release > Bait harvest/baby crab genocide via bird.