Sunday, March 26, 2017

Why A Conch Farm Is Leading Conservation Efforts

By Kevin Myers


Aquaculture or sea culture has been in development throughout the Bahamas, part of the a region where island archipelagos abound. The Caribbean is now alive with projects to save endemic marine species and some are very successful. This kind of success has provided impetus for these projects to do more, often being able to protect marine life while being successful commercially.

Some of these are conches, one of these being the Caribbean Queen, which has been a good part of human diets in the region for a very long time. Conch farm in Turks and Caicos has made many scientific and technological advances to rehabilitate the said species while practicing excellent seafarming. It is a model many are following and it is accessible online.

TCI authorities are doing a joint venture with the companies that are leading the field, and this bode well for the complete recovery of a species that is still overfished throughout the area. Unregulated hunting for the longest time means that there are less of them in the wild than ever. Because of the farms, the conches have now a fighting chance for survival.

The farms are where an innovative new technique of farming undersea has been developed. This uses deep offshore areas for submerging cages in, and the system is now testing for culturing other native species that are also popular catches. The partnership of government and private companies applied the things discovered in conch farming for snapper, cobia, pompano and grouper.

The pioneer conch farms have provided stimulus for economic growth by providing many jobs, and giving the local economy a good source of low cost protein. Meantime, wild stocks of conch are being protected from abuse. Farms are high technology operations that include hatcheries, young fish development systems for distribution on the offshore undersea pastures.

For the Caicos group, the main specie being addressed is the strombus gigas, but diversification is ongoing. The aquaculture revolution here is ongoing, and now has things that make it an industry that is friendly to the environment. When completed, the new project can enable TCI to be one of the most successful seafaming countries worldwide.

Places for the farms have been studied for having deeper waters with reliable currents. They will work best for the larger scale farms being built undersea. Other kinds of conches, though, are still in danger from overfishing. Without the advocacy of the farms in TCI, they would be in real danger of becoming extinct.

The farming operations are becoming highly attractive places for interested conservationists and concerned people to visit. The companies do not like for their operations to become tourism intensive even as the islands has a good industry in this regard. A limited number of tours and visits are now accepted, which is something of heaven for a certain type of eco activist.

The seafarming method has achieved a lot of things that is now being studied for application on other places. Despite the fact that the tech developed here is for warmer seas, these can be adapted. There are a number of good websites to further study this topic.




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