eli5 what stops me from going to the beach and harvesting horseshoe crabs and selling their blood if it truly is worth 15,000$ a quart?
In: Biology
* Local regulations.
* Some beaches that have a large population of horse-shoe crabs don’t allow harvesting of those same crabs.
* So that’s one thing that stops you.
Are you looking for a legal opinion?
If yes then this comment will lead to an appropriate answer from other and smart people.
The people who are buying horseshoe crab blood at that price aren’t buying it from you.
They’re buying it from medical grade suppliers with extremely strict and exacting quality controls who can supply a consistent product suitable for use in pharmaceuticals.
Some species are endangered and many are protected due to overharvesting in the past. Not to mention they’re crustaceans. If you ever broke a crabs arm while it is alive you will see a lot of goop come out. Horseshoe crabs have very little blood to begin with (there is only 7-8 quarts in a human and think of the size difference) and you would need some kind of centrifuge to separate the liquids and get blood without other matter in it (idk what they’d use) . Not to mention you only really find a lot of them on shore lines around brackish water salt water. I found tons and tons of them on the shores in Maryland but never on any other beaches.
Quality control. I’m not buying a bunch of blood in Ziploc bags off of Facebook marketplace. What’s there to prove that you didn’t just get the blood out of some other random animal (or person) and that it’s been taken care of/not contaminated?
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