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Threats
overexploitation for food and ornamentals
STATUS:
IUCN -- COMMERCIALLY THREATENED (1994)
SIZE:
Length of shell:
8 inches (20 cm)
Weight:
2 pounds (1 kg)
Meat weight:
0.5 pound (0.25 kg)
HABITAT:
Shallow warm water, near coral reefs where sea grass is abundant, offshore sand and algal plains. As conchs mature, they move from shallow, inshore sands to deeper offshore sites.
POPULATION:
Unknown
CURRENT RANGE:
Southeast Florida and
the West Indies; Bermuda
CONSERVATION:
Captive-breeding programs, but so far without success; CITES trade restrictions; tagging of juveniles
for monitoring purposes
When overfishing led
to a rapid decline in the queen conch population, scientists investigated the possibility of raising them. At the Fundacion Los Roques Research Station on an island in Venezuela, the first egg masses were harvested for captive breeding in 1975. After hatching, the conchs
survived for a full year,
but only in the laboratory. The release in the wild
did not work.
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One In A (Half) Million
Sea-grass beds, waving in the shallow waters of the Caribbean, are the principal habitat of the queen conch, one of the largest marine snails.
Queen conchs graze on algae and sea grasses that depend on plenty of sunlight and grow only near the shore or around coral reefs. Conchs are rarely found at depths greater than 70 feet (21 m). The spines of their large heavy shells can often be seen sticking up out of the water at low tide.
They reach sexual maturity after three years, when their shells are about eight inches long and they weigh two pounds -- nearly a half pound of which is edible meat.
Food Source Supreme
The queen conch has always played a central role in
human societies in the Caribbean. It's an ideal food source: it makes a nutritious meal, it's incredibly easy to catch, and it comes in its own cooking-pot (its shell -- which can also be a valuable trade item).
In the ocean, abandoned conch shells provide shelter for hermit crabs, baby groupers, octopuses, and many other creatures. The conch itself is an important grazer, helping to keep sea grass and other plants in balance.
As human populations around the Caribbean basin have increased, so have collecting pressures on conchs. They're not only eaten, they're also used as bait for fishing, and their shells are a valuable item for tourist trade. Once common throughout the area, they are now quite rare in the Florida Keys, the Bahamas, Cuba, and many other population centers. Their disappearance is a significant blow to both human economies and ocean ecosystems.
Efforts to restock the oceans with conch reared in tanks have failed. They're easy enough to raise in captivity, but once released into the ocean, they are eaten immediately. The captive-bred young conch, as one scientist observed, "seem to be missing the know- how that makes it possible to escape predation."
It is uncertain how many queen conchs remain in the Caribbean. Can they come back? Only research and time will tell.
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