Loved to death: Turks and Caicos' battle to save the queen conch
By Gemma Handy
From a staple food to its use as a musical instrument, few things epitomise the culture of the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) like the queen conch.
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Except, for several days in January, there were none to be found.
Overfishing is being blamed for plummeting ocean stocks which saw conch off the menu at several restaurants across Providenciales.
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Mr Bowen blamed a lack of action from the government, which still permits conch to be exported, along with watersports operators who allow holidaymakers to take home live juvenile conchs as souvenirs.
"They assume conch is unlimited but environmentalists have been warning about this for years," Mr Bowen added.
Conch has at times been the islands' biggest export. Florida, which is just 600 miles (965km) away and which has itself banned conch fishing for decades due to its own shortages, is a prime customer.
Turks and Caicos' annual conch exports have topped one million pounds (453,600kg) of meat in years past, equating to roughly 200,000 animals.
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The shortage is echoed across the Caribbean with one study in neighbouring Bahamas suggesting the country could lose its conch industry entirely within a decade without urgent action.
Last year, Jamaica implemented a ban on all conch fishing amid a dramatic decline in stocks.
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Conchs are particularly vulnerable to overexploitation, due to their slow mobility, habitat in shallow, accessible water, and slow growth and reproductive cycles.
By grazing on algae which can smother coral reefs, they play an important environmental role too.
But their numbers have to be at a certain density to enable them to reproduce, explained Chuck Hesse, who founded the islands' erstwhile Conch Farm in the 1980s.
"The female conch, like a cat, gives forth a pheromone to attract the males. If there are no males downstream to smell it, mating will never occur," he said.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-51285893