Hong Kong Students Raise the Living Fossils

City University research found that Hong Kong's wild horseshoe crabs fell by more than 90% between 2002 and 2009 as coastlines were developed. Since 2009 the Ocean Park Conservation Foundation and City University have run a Juvenile Horseshoe Crab Rearing Programme: secondary students raise artificially bred juveniles and release them, and by 2014 more than 1,800 students had taken part, 975 crabs had been released and survival in the classroom had risen from 16% to 76%. Since 2014 the Foundation has also run the territory's largest juvenile survey, with volunteers searching 17 mudflats, and in 2023-24 it added an acoustic telemetry array in Tung Chung Bay to track tagged adults. Wild juveniles are estimated at only a few thousand of two species, so every count matters.