Horseshoe crab all but end the practice of blood harvesting from horseshoe crabs. Horseshoe crabs are used as bait to fish for eels (mostly in the United States) and whelk, or conch. However, fishing with horseshoe crab was banned indefinitely in New Jersey in 2008 with a moratorium on harvesting to protect the red knot wading bird, which eats the crab's eggs. A moratorium was restricted to male crabs in Delaware, and a permanent moratorium is in effect in South Carolina. The eggs are eaten in parts of Southeast Asia and China. A low horseshoe crab population in the Delaware Bay is
Common minke whale common minke whale was recognized as a separate species from the Antarctic minke whale based on mitochondrial DNA testing. This testing also confirmed that the Antarctic minke whale is the closest relative of the common minke whale, thus confirming the validity of the minke whale clade. Common and Antarctic minke whales diverged from each other in the Southern Hemisphere 4.7 million years ago, during a prolonged period of global warming in the early Pliocene which disrupted the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and created local pockets of upwelling, facilitating speciation by fragmenting populations. The radiation of common minke whales into the Northern