The Global Conservation Alliance, founded in 2008 by West Tisbury avian photographer Lanny McDowell, Norman Famous and Porter Turnbull to address the red knot’s declines, has won support from outdoor clothing and gear retailer Patagonia.

The alliance approached Patagonia to help its migrant shorebird project. Patagonia agreed to fund 80 per cent of the expenses for this May’s 10-day field season on the beaches of Delaware Bay. The remainder of the expense is being picked up by the Minneapolis legal firm of Schwegman, Lundberg & Woessner, an annual supporter of the Red Knot Survival Project.

The alliance’s focus is squarely on developing and applying methods to increase the body weight of shorebirds moving through Delaware Bay on their spring flights from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic, by providing enough horseshoe crab eggs for the birds to fatten up on.

The population of the red knot, along with other shorebird species with similar feeding habits, has been dropping disastrously since the horseshoe crab fishing industry in the mid-Atlantic states took off in the early 1990s to meet demand for eel and conch trap bait.

Even though many researchers have studied the problem and conservation activists have achieved political gains in curbing some of the excessive horseshoe crab harvest, there have been very few active solutions put on the table. The alliance aims to remedy the dearth of practical solutions to this threat of imminent extinction. Early reports of a high percentage drop in red knot numbers overwintering this year in southern Argentina — down to 11,000 birds — are concerning everyone keeping track of this species.

Knots are seen in small numbers passing through the Vineyard on migration. The vast majority of them stage nearby on the islands off Chatham in the fall for their open ocean flights back to South America, but in the spring most red knots leave the coast, heading north from Delaware Bay, and thus they miss the Vineyard.

For more details about the Red Knot Survival Project at the alliance, photos and donation directions, visit http://globalconservationalliance.org/.