44 / 116
42
|
WINTER 2017
LIFE
AQUATIC
T
here are more than 60 different
species of conch (pronounced “konk”)
in our oceans. The queen conch,
Lobatus gigas
, is the most common
and economically important in the
Caribbean. Queen conch dwell in
warm, shallow waters from Florida and Bermuda to
Brazil and have permeated Caribbean culture and
cuisine like few other animals. Most people are familiar
with their beautiful pink shells — iconic symbols of
the Caribbean and tropical places everywhere — that
appear ubiquitously in the form of tourist trinkets, old-
time ship horns, building decorations, jewelry and in a
prominent place on the Bahamian coat of arms.
When I moved to the Bahamas in 2012, I didn’t
know much about the mollusks found within these
shells, but they are even more fascinating when you
look under the hood.
CONCH ANATOMY
When you look under a conch’s shell for the first
time, it can be difficult to tell what is what. Conch
are so different from other animals it’s hard to relate,
but they do have eyes, a nose (sort of), a mouth and a
single foot. The mouth, which is at the end of a tube,
has a tongue that’s used for scraping algae off sea
grass blades. A conch’s two eyes are on the ends of
long stalks, and just in front of each eye is a little
antenna sensory receptor. Amazingly, conch are
capable of regenerating a lost eye. Conch create
their pink shells using calcium and carbonate ions
from seawater. The shells are so tough they can be
used to make cement harder. Conch have a single
foot they can use to lunge or “hop” along the bottom.
They are not exactly quick, which means they’re quite
easy for divers and freedivers to catch.
CONCH LIFE CYCLE
Conch hatch from egg masses after three to five days
and begin their life floating as planktonic larvae (called
veligers) in the currents of the open ocean before
settling on the bottom. Once settled they go through
a metamorphosis and bury under the sand, emerging
a year later as 1- to 2-inch-long animals. The shell
grows in a spiral and increases in size for about four
years, after which time the conch reaches its adult size.
At this point the conch shell begins to flare outward,
creating a thicker and thicker lip. The adult conch
will be ready to mate when the lip is about a half inch
thick. Females lay 300,000 to 500,000 eggs annually
between April and September. Conch can live for more
than 20 years if not disturbed.
Because of the plankton stage of the animal’s life
cycle and other factors, farming conch is extremely
difficult and expensive. So far only one large-scale
commercial conch farm (located in the Turks and
Caicos) has been tried, but it was never profitable. It
still exists today, mainly as a tourist attraction.
CONCH CULTURE
“If you a Bahamian and you see a conch and don’t take
it, you crazy,” dive boat captain and former commercial
fisherman Sidney Brown said to me after I surfaced
from a dive where a large conch was hopping around.
There is an obsession with finding and taking conch in
the Bahamas.
The latest figures, from 2013, estimate that more
than $5 million was generated by conch fisheries
annually — a difficult
number to arrive at
given the prevalence
of tiny, independent
merchants. Conch is
Opposite:
A queen conch peers out of its shell.
Below, from top:
Conch salad and Kalik beer are
indispensable staples of life in the Bahamas.
A Bahamian fisherman removes a conch from its
shell in preparation for tenderizing the meat to
make cracked conch or conch salad.
Text and photos by Shane Gross
CONCH