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Thursday, March 28, 2024
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HomeBahamasA Conch by Any Name is Disappearing

A Conch by Any Name is Disappearing

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Ocean harvest; the bottom of a diver’s boat at the end of a work day. Photography by Devi Sharp
Ocean harvest; the bottom of a diver’s boat at the end of a work day. Photography by Devi Sharp

Conchs are vegetarians and eat alga that grows on sea grass and the sea floor detritus. They use their proboscis to pick up and eat the algae. Conch move using a ‘claw’, a hard appendage that is also their operculum, or the cover for their shell. Unlike most snails, the operculum does not entirely cover the entry of the shell. Conch can travel up to one kilometer in a single night, but more often they travel about a quarter of that distance and their travel rate changes with the seasons.

Queen Conchs usually mate on sandy substrate in shallow water. Females lay egg masses with about half a million embryos. It takes about five days for the embryos to hatch and travel to the surface. These are called veligers and they drift in the ocean for about three weeks. When they are about the size of a grain of sand, they settle to the bottom. At this point they have developed a tiny transparent shell called protoconch with a foot and a mouth. Juvenile conchs are small versions of the adults with larger spikes on their shell; the spikes wear down as the conch matures and sand abrades the shell. They reach a shell length of close to three inches after one year and five inches after two years. Food availability influences conch morphology and growth. It takes about four years for the queen conch to reach maturity and they can live to twenty years or more.

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Devi_Sharp
Devi_Sharp
Devi Sharp is a retired wildlife biologist and exploring the Caribbean with her husband, Hunter, on their sailboat Arctic Tern.
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