[Lyric] Poisoning the Sea Chapter 12 (Dr. Sylvia A. Earle)

...as a child I first fell in love with the froth-topped waves crashing green, cold water on clean, pale sand along the New Jersey shore, and with the creatures there: sand crabs, starfish, glistening jellies, bristling tangles of red and brown seaweed, and sometimes the strangest, most formidable-looking but gentle beasts imaginable---horseshoe crabs, dozens of them, sometimes hundreds, jostling one another and pushing their way high onto the beach. Their smooth-domed shells, glossy as polished leather, contrasted with the barb-fringed aft end, especially the long stiff “tail” spine that was a convenient handle with which to pick them up for a closer look. I was fascinated by the crabs’ determined efforts to to get out of the water to the sand, where, I thought, they would surely die. I gathered as many members of the gleaming brown armada as I could and turned them back into the sea---not aware that I was intruding on a vital ritual of mating: the release of eggs and sperm in the wave-washed intertidal area. It did not occur to me that these enchanting creatures would one day bring into sharp focus the devastating impact one species---mine---is having on the future life in the sea, and on the planet as a whole.