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If you click the BI link under the image [0] and watch the video they say they're still alive, and that they try to only drain 30% of their blood before putting them back in the ocean. But (paraphrasing) up to 30% don't survive the process and "no one really knows if they even recover down there".

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/why-horseshoe-crab-blood-exp...

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>no one really knows if they even recover down there

It seems like it would be pretty easy to find out. I guess there isn't much motivation to open that can of worms.

If the answer is a hard no, then you could fully bleed out just 1/3 of the crabs. My naive assumption is that this would help guarantee a stable population, which would probably be beneficial to the bleeders.

It is tricky to get correct information here, as many of the organization that are related to the conservation of the species are funded by the main producers of LAL based endotoxin tests (and hence bleeders, or procurers of Horseshoe crab blood).

At this point, Horseshoe crabs are critical infrastructure in qualityquality control for Pharma and medtech.

Source: Co-founded biotech startup in the horseshoe crab space that had to fold.

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