William Sargent, environmental author and *NOVA* consultant, reveals intense debates currently surrounding horseshoe crabs. Surviving almost unmolested for 300 million years, the horseshoe crab is now the object of an intense legal and ethical struggle involving marine biologists, environmentalists, US government officials, biotechnologists, and international corporations. William Sargent is a consultant to the *NOVA* Science Series and former director of the Baltimore Aquarium. He presently teaches at The Briarwood Center for Marine Biology and at Harvard University.
Bill Sargent is a NOVA consultant and author of 5 books on science and the environment. He studied plankton as a research assistant at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and was the first director of the National Aquarium in Baltimore. He has taught Science Writing at Harvard University and Marine Biology at the Briarwood Field Station in Bourne. Bill has worked on the status of horseshoe crabs in Pleasant Bay. This research was used in the creation of two reserves for this strategic biomedical resource.