Six Strombus species 1 inhabit the shallow coastal waters of Florida and the Caribbean region: Strombus gigas Linnaeus (queen conch), S. costatus Gmelin (milk conch), S. raninus Gmelin (hawk-wing conch), S. alatus Gmelin (Florida fighting conch), S. pugilis Linnaeus (West Indian fighting conch) and S. gallus Linnaeus (rooster-tail conch; Abbott 1974). Of these species, S. gigas holds the highest commercial value as a subsistence and commercial fisheries product (Berg 1976, Brownell 1977, Appeldoorn 1994). S. costatus is also a highly valued fisheries species in Mexico (Aldana-Aranda et al. 1989).
Overfishing and the decline of the S. gigas fishery began in the 1970s and led to the enactment of several regulations and management strategies to protect conch populations (Appeldoorn 1994). A statewide moratorium on queen conch harvesting in Florida began in 1986 (Florida Administration Code, Chapter 68B16.005), and in 1992, S. gigas was added to Appendix 2 of the Convention for the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) legal mandate. Countries that export queen conch must possess a CITES permit, which helps to ensure that harvest rates remain low enough to maintain a viable fisheries population. In addition to employing management strategies to protect wild populations, culturing queen conch for stock enhancement and commercial markets will also offset fisheries pressure (Creswell 1994, Davis and Shawl (2004a).
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Captive Breeding Behavior of Four Strombidae Conch( 8 pages type pdf, 2.0 MB )
