2043 Spanish Wells Drive
Landfall
$745,000
5 BD / 4 BA / 1 HALF BA / 4352 SQFT.
Lovely brick home perfectly situated on over ½
acre in the heart of Landfall
101 Parmele Boulevard
Wrightsville Beach
$1,800,000
6 BD / 4 BA/ 1 HALF BA / 4808 SQFT.
Unique eco-friendly beach home with peaceful,
unobstructed ocean views and close to the beach
15 Sea Oats Lane
Wrightsville Beach
$186,000
4 BD / 3 BA / 2385 SQFT.
Paradise beckons - own 5 weeks a year of this
lovely beachfront home
143 Middle Oaks Drive
Middle Oaks
$1,295,000
5 BD / 5 BA / 1 HALF BA / 4353 SQFT.
Breathtakenly peaceful views of the marsh,
ocean, and Intracoastal from this residence
14B E Greensboro Street
Wrightsville Beach
$725,000
3 BD / 3 BA / 1445 SQFT.
A coastal retreat just a handful of steps away from
Wrightsville’s sandy beach
2700 N Lumina #605
Wrightsville beach
$290,000
1 BD / 1 BA / 1 HALF BA / 585 SQFT.
Shell Island Resort is situated on the northern tip
of Wrightsville Beach overlooking the beach
Contact our agency today and make a friend for life.
910.367.9767 | mclark@intracoastalrealty.com | michelleclarkteam.com
28
WBM september 2018
“They’re doing something
right. There’s something about
them that makes them really suc-cessful,”
Gould says.
Not only are they harmless to
humans, they are incredibly help-ful.
It’s in their blood. Literally.
Horseshoe crab blood — its
color a lovely Carolina blue — is
used to detect dangerous bacteria
such as E. coli in injectable drugs,
implantable medical devices, and
hospital instruments including scal-pels
and IVs. The blood coagulates
when it comes into contact with
bacterial endotoxins, letting scien-tists
know that the vaccine or piece
of medical equipment is not safe to
use on patients.
The harvesting of horseshoe
crab blood is a $112 million a year
industry, with a quart going for as
much as $14,000. The biomedi-cal
industry bleeds about 500,000
crabs a year, at places like Charles
River Laboratories in Charleston,
South Carolina. Horseshoe crabs
are caught in the wild, about a third
of their blood is extracted, and they
are returned to the ocean.
But not every creature survives
the procedure. Mortality rates are
as high as 30 percent, a factor in
declining population rates.
“We are seeing their populations
drop a little bit. In the international
listing, they’re listed as vulnerable,”
Gould says.
Demand is growing each year,
but a synthetic has been developed
that could eliminate the need to
harvest blood from horseshoe crabs.
The harvesting of their blood is
not the only cause for the decline.
“Their populations are a small
fraction of what they once were, less
because of the harvesting for their
blood, but more because people
have harvested them and killed
them for a long time as bait for
blue crab traps,” Pawlik says.