September 22, 2020 — Allen Burgenson had a job, his father explained as they stood on the sand.
This was Allen’s first fishing trip, but he wasn’t going to take anything from the bay. He was to return the water’s gifts to the deep, where they’d belonged for hundreds of millions of years.
If he spotted a horseshoe crab on its back, his father said as he held Allen’s hand, that meant it was in trouble and needed Allen’s help to get home. Allen just had to flip it over. Its 10 legs could make it the rest of the way back to the crashing waves.
Allen did just that on that day in 1963 in Sandy Hook, New Jersey, when he was 3 years old. That’s what he still does today. Whenever Burgenson enjoys a stroll along the East Coast, he is still a lookout for the stranded sea creature that’s unlike anything else on the planet.
In 1963, Burgenson didn’t know that inside each of those ancient animals he saved was something that would help save millions of us during his lifetime.
In 2020, the horseshoe crab is poised to assume a vital role in a drug the whole world awaits, a COVID-19 vaccine.