SVG conch under serious threat

by LYF COMPTON

EXPORTS OF CONCH in 2019 were valued at over EC$6.7 million, accounting for 70 per cent of the seafood exported from St Vincent and the Grenadines.

However, this once abundant species is facing very real threats including unsustainable harvesting, over-exploitation, habitat degradation, and illegal fishing.

This is according to Chief Fisheries Officer (CFO) Jennifer Cruickshank-Howard who told persons gathered at the first ever Union Island Conch Festival last Saturday that because of its popularity and high demand, the global availability of conch has been in steady decline since the early 2000s.

“Added to this, conch has a naturally slow reproductive turnover. It takes over three years for a queen conch to reach sexual maturity. This means that it takes over three years for one conch to be able to mate and lay its first batch of eggs,” Cruickshank-Howard explained.

She said although one conch can lay over 500,000 eggs, juvenile mortality is very high and only one in 500,000 will mature into adulthood.

This is why only mature conch (with the flared lip) should be harvested, leaving the rest so that they can get a chance to reproduce.

The CFO said that since 1992, the queen conch has been included in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which has regulated its trade internationally, in an effort to prevent extinction. SVG is a party to CITES, and legislation also exists locally to protect the species, with the Fisheries Act prohibiting harvesting of conch less than seven inches in length, immature conch without the flared lip or those with meat under half a pound.

A draft management plan was also completed in October 2008, based on the FAO’s revised manual for the monitoring and management of queen conch. The Fisheries Division will also implement a baseline data collection and monitoring system to further assess the current status of the fishery and evaluate its sustainability. This will include collecting both biological and socio-economic information.

Additionally, a desktop review, assessing the queen conch population throughout SVG is currently being processed by a consultancy team and Cruickshank-Howard said this will provide us with much needed information on the current status of conch.

Cruickshank-Howard expressed her pleasure that the Union Island Tourist Board recognizes the importance of the conch fishery and decided to host the Conch Festival which took place over the last weekend.

She said that conch is exported to several regional and international countries with most being shipped to the USA.

“Within the last three years, there has been a 162 per cent increase in conch and conch product exports. Currently, the Union Island Fisheries Centre is the main landing site where most of the conch is landed,” Cruickshank-Howard said while noting that this centre provides conch to the fisheries centre in Owia and Bequia for export.

She said the fisherfolk and their families on Union Island are earning a good living from the harvesting, processing and exportation of conch, which is responsible for further revenue generation through jobs created within the processing and marketing industries.