By Dana Malcolm 

Staff writer

#TurksandCaicos, January 15, 2023 – Conch is one of The Turks and Caicos’ most famous additions to the global palate, Queen’s Conch to be exact but the resource may be declining.  The Resilience Sustainable Energy and Marine Biodiversity Program, an EU arm, is carrying out a program to find out for sure and preserve the conch for future generations.

RESEMBID has been working alongside the Department of Environment and Coastal Resources; the Department of Marine Fisheries and Resource Management; the Joint Nature Conservation Committee from the UK and the Marine Conservation Society over the past few months on the first steps of the program called Sustaining Queen Conch Livelihoods and Fisheries in the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Kathy Lockhart, Assistant Director for fisheries and Marine Resources Management explained, “It is a project that’s funded by the UK and we are working with the JNCC and we’re trying to find better data on stock assessment for Queen’s Conch. So we’re doing underwater videos, local consumption surveys with restaurants and we’re going to bring all of this information together to try to find non detrimental findings.”

These findings will then be exported to CITES, The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

The project which should conclude before April included:

• Using underwater visual surveys to determine just how much Queen Conch is in our oceans
• After that the team found out how much was being caught and eaten with domestic consumption surveys including interviews with key stakeholders on the nature and extent of conch harvest for local consumption.

The third stage of the plan will soon go into implementation. This includes training staff of the TCI government and statutory bodies on the implementation of CITES rules.  After that the Government will need to put rules in place to ensure future sustainability of the commodity with export.

Becky Austin of the JNCC explained that while Queen Conch is still traded internationally it is an endangered species.

“Therefore It’s really important especially for the Turks and Caicos that the fishery is sustainable into the future— making sure that we protect fishermen’s livelihood and the cultural importance of Queen Conch into the future.”