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Once plentiful, the Queen conch is getting harder to find in its natural range. The Queen conch is the national dish of the Bahamas, and its flared lip, spiral-shell is a symbol of that nation. The conch appears on Bahamas coins and in various motifs.
According to the locals, both fishers and restauranteurs, there was a time not so long ago when you could harvest conch from the beach. Today, however, you need a boat and you need to be prepared to dive for the island staple.
The reasons conch are harder to find include overfishing, increased predator population, and the rise in ocean temperature.
Moving forward, the nation’s officials look to responsible animal husbandry to combat overfishing, but the other two problems might be out of their hands.
The Queen conch’s hard shell is a predator deterrent, but still no match for the dexterous octopi that reside in the deeper waters. Both humans and octopi have put the Queen conch population in decline.
The third problem on the list, the rise in ocean temperatures, is not a problem the Bahaman population can solve on their own. Warmer oceans are doing two things to decrease conch populations:
- shorter reproductive windows leading to fewer conch in each successive generation
- stronger storms leading to more frequent and larger die-offs.
Every year the Bahama Queen conch becomes more precious.
The Queen conch is not the only animal to suffer in the hotter oceans and the Bahamans are doing everything they can to cool the seas and continue their island lifestyle.
In addition to responsible and renewable harvesting and agricultural practices, the people on the Bahaman Islands are actively engaging in carbon sequestration, resilient solar power installations, restoration of mangrove forests and coral reefs, and monitoring systems that detect declines, before key components of the ecosystem disappear.
These efforts are supported by the Bahama government which spearheads many of the aforementioned projects. Institutes from the US and experts from the world at large come together to work on these projects. So much so, that the Bahamas is considered a testing ground for adapting to changes in the climate.
With a little luck, the Queen conch numbers will rebound like portions of the mangrove forest.
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Read More:
In Bahamas, conch fishing is way of life. But for how long? AP News
In the Bahamas, a constant race to adapt to climate change. New York Times
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