By Jessica Mejia
As a researcher and professor, John Tanacredi spends a majority of his time in a laboratory that breeds “living fossils”. These “living fossils” have been saving human lives for over 40 years and he feels it’s about time to give some overdue recognition.
At 73, John Tanacredi describes his life as “nothing extraordinary.”
Described by friends as honest, trustworthy and dedicated, and at times unwavering. All attributes bringing Tanacredi to the point of his career today, director of CERCOM, Center for Environmental Research and Coastal Oceans.
Tanacredi has studied a variety of species over his career, “basically anything without bones” otherwise known as invertebrates. At CERCOM, he studies one species in particular, horseshoe crabs.
Not true crabs and more closely related to spiders, horseshoe crabs have survived five mass extinctions and rightfully earned the nickname “the living fossil”.
With the full moon acting as its guide, hundreds of thousands of horseshoe crabs crawl onto beaches across the U.S. mid-Atlantic to lay their eggs every spring. The eggs act as a yearly feast providing essential energy to migrating birds along the coast. The horseshoe crabs themselves save millions of human lives every year, literally.
What do horseshoe crabs have to do with human health? “Almost everything,” Tanacredi said.
Extremely sensitive to toxins, limulus amoebocyte lysate, or LAL, is the unique blue blood contained within the horseshoe crab. Its blood acts as a “bacterial endotoxin detection system,” Tanacredi said. In simpler terms, it prevents bad bacteria from entering into humans.
Horseshoe crabs copper-based blood is used to test for contamination during the manufacture of anything that might go inside the human body.
In the U.S. alone, there are 200,00 deaths every year from sepsis. Without horseshoe crabs Tanacredi explained that number would double, if not triple.
Tanacredi said horseshoe crabs have been playing this vital role in the biomedical industry for over 40 years.
“Anyone interested in an animal that is 450 million years old has to find a life I guess,” Tanacredi said sarcastically.
Following and admiring the practical nature of both his father and grandfather, Tanacredi lives his life by what his father would call the comfortable ability factor. “Can you be any more comfortable than being comfortable?”
Tanacredi was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a father who worked at the U.S. Treasury Department for over 40 years. His grandfather, an Italian immigrant, was a shoe maker.
Tanacredi grew up with a love for sports, and as hard as it was to watch them play, in his mind no TEAM is as good as the Mets.
Tanacredi was first introduced to nature as a kid by feeding peanuts to pigeons in the city with his grandfather. It was a “big thing for me, kind of my introduction to nature. It was not natural experiences, not like taking me to a national park like what I did with my kids.”
In 1967, Tanacredi volunteered for the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam war. He considers himself fortunate enough to not be sent to Vietnam. Instead, he flew in an aircraft called a fixed-wing WC-121 Super Constellation chasing hurricanes collecting meteorological data providing him with a “great perspective of the ocean”.
Once finished up his naval career, Tanacredi was the first in his family to go to college. “I was interested in the science part. To be tolerant and being able to kind of look at things and how important the obstacle is and how does that obstacle impact you.”
Today, Tanacredi dedicates his work to the largest horseshoe crab breeding laboratory in the United States.
Tanacredi’s inspiration and admiration for the horseshoe crab comes from a Franciscan priest, George Ruggieri, who he met at church while he was volunteering at the New York Aquarium. It just so happened that Ruggieri was also the director at the New York Aquarium.
Ruggieri wrote the “Healing Sea: A Voyage into the Alien World Offshore” in 1978, which discussed the medicines humans obtain from the environment.
“It’s a passion, but a passion for everyone,”. Tanacredi said. “Life and understanding where we get our medicines, not just from someone in a lab making it up. Which can happen, but [it’s] all mimicking what happens in the environment.”
According to scientists, 75%of all medications come of some organisms consisting primarily of plant or marine life.
The “Healing Sea” tells the story of the Madagascar rosy periwinkle, a small purple flower plant that was harvested by scientists and brought back to the lab in 1950s. Fast forward 17 years, two chemicals, vinblastine and vincristine, are today being utilized as cancer-fighting medicines against acute lymphoblastic leukemia, otherwise known as childhood leukemia.
Childhood leukemia “would have been a death sentence before these chemicals,” Tanacredi said.
According to scientists, vincristine has helped increase the chance of surviving childhood leukemia from 10% to 90%, while vinblastine is used to treat Hodgkin’s disease.
“The lymphocytes of children with this disease dramatically increase. Children basically suffocate to death. It’s brutal,” Tanacredi said.
Observing the brutal effects of childhood leukemia with his own child who was diagnosed at 7 years old, Tanacredi explained how his son had to undergo 10 years of treatment and is now cured thanks to the rosy periwinkle. “He’s our little miracle.”
The connection, biodiversity, it all started with the “Healing Sea.”
“No one plans on these life experiences. This is why we preserve biodiversity,” Tanacredi said.
Today, conservationists are uncertain of what the future holds for horseshoe crab populations.
Habitat loss, pollution, natural disasters and overfishing are all human-caused elements that stress the population of horseshoe crabs.
According to scientists, within the biomedical industry in the United States it is estimated that 50,000 horseshoe crabs die in the blood extraction process every year, and more research needs to be done to learn the full effects of biomedical industry on the crab.
Scientists have also observed that when the horseshoe crab population drops in the mid-Atlantic, there is a direct link to lower shorebird populations.
Migratory birds such as the red knot, ruddy turnstone, sandpipers and other shorebird species rely on the 90,000 eggs from a single nesting female HSC laid by each female horseshoe crab. Using the eggs to gather nutrients for its long migration is the red knot who has one of the longest migration routes of any bird, from the artic to the southern tip of South America.
“Even for those people who could care less about wildlife looking purely in self-interest. The impact of horseshoe crabs is vital to our economy and health standard of living,” said David Wheeler, executive director at the Conserve Wildlife Foundation.
“The biomedical industry is required to get horseshoe crabs back into the wild within 36 hours” Wheeler said.
He said it can be hard to tell what the biomedical industry regulations are when harvesting horseshoe crabs, as other factors aren’t even regulated.
“If they take the crabs from 200 miles from their lab, they can release them in area more convenient for them. They aren’t required to release them where they harvested them,” Wheeler said. “There is no transparency.”
According to two studies done in 2016 and 2017 by Meghan Ownings at the Biological Bulletin, biomedically bled horseshoe crabs suffer from disorientation, preventing horseshoe crabs from finding beaches to mate and lay its eggs.
Ownings’ studies also suggest that crabs take three to seven days to regain their blood volume the recovery from the bleeding process. It can take up to four months for amebocytes, a cell that helps increase eggs being produced, to return to normal levels.
“If the bled animals, especially females [due to their larger size], have alterations in their biological rhythms and mating behaviors, it is likely to further alter the sex ratio on spawning beaches, reduce reproductive output, lower population levels, and decrease the fitness and survival of this keystone species,” the study states.
Tanacredi has been working for years to have the horseshoe crab declared a world heritage species. But he worries “The United Nations is never going to take an invertebrate.”
Currently, on the list of applications are the more charismatic animals like lions, tigers and bears.
“Bengal tigers people will reach out into their pockets and protect them. But Bengal tigers won’t take care of you. They don’t care of your health. They haven’t been around for 450 million years,” Tanacredi said.
If Tanacredi had his way, horseshoe crabs would never be used for bait or food. And although he supports the biomedical industry’s use of the crab’s blood for medicine, he’d like to see a synthetic alternative.
“That’s what I envision, it’s what I hope.” Tanacredi said.
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This piece was prepared online by Panuruji Kenta, Publisher, SEVENSEAS Media