Fishery Management Plan, Regulatory Impact Review, and Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Queen Conch Resources of Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands

Queen conch (Strombus gigas) resources occur throughout the Caribbean Sea and in the Atlantic Ocean northward to Bermuda, but populations in certain areas are decidedly overfished and in need of management. Conch are edible marine gastropods that move inshore and aggregate along areas of the insular platform to spawn. Therefore, they are extremely vulnerable to harvest especially during the spawning season. At a recent workshop in Caracas, Venezuela, the participants filled-out questionnaires to provide landings estimates of the most recent year available (Appeldoorn, 1992b). The estimates covered a range of years (from 1988 through 1991), and represented annual landings for most of the major conch producing nations of the area. The resulting total was 4,168 metric tons or 9,169,600 lbs. The information indicated: (l) that over one-third of the catch was used solely in the Cuban bait fishery, and (2) that landings from Colombia, Mexico, and Puerto Rico all declined considerably (47-140 percent) in recent years. Cuba led the area in production and was followed in order of decreasing landings by Jamaica, Turks and Caicos Islands, Bahamas, Venezuela (all illegal), Colombia, and Belize; landings by other nations were substantially lower than 100 mt each.