Why A Conch Farm Is Leading Conservation Efforts

By Kevin Myers


Aquaculture or sea culture has been in development throughout the Bahamas, part of the a region where island archipelagos abound. The Caribbean is now alive with projects to save endemic marine species and some are very successful. This kind of success has provided impetus for these projects to do more, often being able to protect marine life while being successful commercially.

Some of these are conches, one of these being the Caribbean Queen, which has been a good part of human diets in the region for a very long time. Conch farm in Turks and Caicos has made many scientific and technological advances to rehabilitate the said species while practicing excellent seafarming. It is a model many are following and it is accessible online.

TCI authorities are doing a joint venture with the companies that are leading the field, and this bode well for the complete recovery of a species that is still overfished throughout the area. Unregulated hunting for the longest time means that there are less of them in the wild than ever. Because of the farms, the conches have now a fighting chance for survival.

Specialists here have created a deep sea farming method that can be done with offshore cages. This method is revolutionary and is now being pilot tested for several endemic fish species that are becoming more endangered. The government of the islands and its partners has applied what they learned from conch farms for grouper, pompano, snapper and cobia.

The pioneer conch farms have provided stimulus for economic growth by providing many jobs, and giving the local economy a good source of low cost protein. Meantime, wild stocks of conch are being protected from abuse. Farms are high technology operations that include hatcheries, young fish development systems for distribution on the offshore undersea pastures.

In the islands, the farmed specie is mainly the Caribbean Queen Conch, but diversity is already being practiced. Thus the revolutionary new kind of mariculture is still being extended, creating a leading island industry. If the project for better and larger cages is finished, the nation will become a leading seafarming one that will lead the world.

Places for the farms have been studied for having deeper waters with reliable currents. They will work best for the larger scale farms being built undersea. Other kinds of conches, though, are still in danger from overfishing. Without the advocacy of the farms in TCI, they would be in real danger of becoming extinct.

The farming operations are becoming highly attractive places for interested conservationists and concerned people to visit. The companies do not like for their operations to become tourism intensive even as the islands has a good industry in this regard. A limited number of tours and visits are now accepted, which is something of heaven for a certain type of eco activist.

The seafarming method has achieved a lot of things that is now being studied for application on other places. Despite the fact that the tech developed here is for warmer seas, these can be adapted. There are a number of good websites to further study this topic.




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