What do conchs look like

The shell is strong, thick, and very attractive, and is used to make shell tools, as ballast, to form jewelry. It is often sold unmodified as a collectible and the animal is also fished and sold for its meat. There are over 60 species of sea snails, all of which have medium- to large-sized 14 inches shells.

In many species , the shell is elaborate and colorful. True conchs like the queen are gastropods in the family Strombidae. The general term "conch" is also applied to other taxonomic families, such as the Melongenidae, which include the melon and crown conchs. The queen conch's scientific name was Strombus gigas until when it was changed to Lobatus gigas to reflect current taxonomy. The conch species live in tropical waters throughout the world, including the Caribbean, West Indies, and the Mediterranean.

They live in relatively shallow waters, including reef and seagrass habitats. Queen conchs live in several different habitat types in the Caribbean, along the Gulf coasts of Florida and Mexico, and in South America. At different depths and aquatic vegetation, their shells have different morphologies, different spine patterns, and various overall lengths and spire shape. The samba conch is the same species as the queen, but compared to a typical queen conch, the samba lives in a shallow environment, is much shorter and very thickly shelled with a darker periostracum layer.

Conchs are herbivores that eat sea grass and algae as well as dead material. In turn, they are eaten by loggerhead sea turtles, horse conchs, and humans. A queen conch can grow to be over a foot long and can live for as long as 30 years—other species have been known to live to 40 or more. Queen conch diets, like most of the conchs in the family, are herbivorous. Larvae and juveniles feed mainly on algae and plankton, but as growing subadults, they develop a long snout that allows them to select and consume bigger pieces of algae, and as juveniles they feed on seagrass.

Adult conchs wander for miles instead of staying in one place. Rather than swimming, they use their feet to lift and and then throw their bodies forward. Conchs also are good climbers. The average home range of a queen conch varies from a third of an acre to nearly 15 acres. They move within their range at the greatest speed in the summer during their reproductive season, when males search for mates and females look for egg-laying habitats.

They are social creatures and reproduce best in aggregations. Queen conchs reproduce sexually and can spawn year-round, depending on latitude and water temperature—in some locations, females migrate from offshore feeding areas in the winter to summer spawning grounds. Females can store fertilized eggs for weeks and multiple males can fertilize any single egg mass during that time. The eggs are laid in shallow coastal waters with sandy substrates.

Up to 10 million eggs can be laid by a single individual each spawning season, depending on the availability of food. Eggs hatch after four days and the planktonic larvae known as veligers drift with the current for between 14 to 60 days. After reaching lengths of about a half-inch, they sink to the sea bottom and hide.

There they morph into juvenile forms and grow to about a 4-inch length. Finally, they move into nearby seagrass beds, where they aggregate in masses and stay until sexually mature. That happens at about 3. After the queen conch reaches maturity, the shell stops growing in length but continues to grow in breadth and its outer lip begins to expand.

The animal itself also stops growing, except for its sexual organs which continue to grow in size. The lifespan of a queen conch is approximately 30 years. But conchs are edible, and in many cases, have been overharvested for meat and also for souvenir shells. Queen conchs are also harvested for their meat in other areas of the Caribbean where they are not yet endangered. Much of this meat is sold to the United States.

Live conchs are also sold for use in aquariums. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Inside a living conch shell is a mollusk, or soft-bodied sea snail. Conchs get around by using a foot or horn to drag themselves along the seafloor. The entire animal is extremely valuable.

For centuries they have been used as a subsistence food throughout the Caribbean. Shell collectors prize them as well for their beauty, adds Dr. Virgin Islands, Jamaica and other Caribbean islands. Some species also live off the coast of South America and the Mediterranean. Conchs mate when a male and female are in proximity to each other, resulting in an egg mass of roughly , eggs, according to Davis. The queen conch, when allowed to really hit its stride, can live up to 40 years!

Its development is slow, but steady, taking several years:. Its shell forms a thick flaring lip. That's the main way to distinguish between juvenile and grown conchs. The conch's status as a tasty delicacy not to mention its collectible shell makes it at risk for overfishing, a fact compounded by the fine distinction between the thin-lipped juvenile which should not be fished and the thicker-lipped adult.

The main problem, Davis notes, is that harvest criteria are woefully out of date and do not reflect more recent science determining that the lip thickness needs to be 15 millimeters about a half-inch before maturity is reached again, around age 4 or 5.

Conchs are already depleted in areas where they were once populous, especially in the Florida Keys where harvesting was banned decades ago and yet populations still haven't recovered. In parts of the Caribbean, rules have been put into place to curb overfishing.

But it's still a major problem, due to lack of rule enforcement, cross-border poaching and a great demand for conch as an export, according to Davis. Other problems have to do with the world at large. Conchs are vital to the ocean both as herbivorous consumers and prey. As previously mentioned, the Florida Keys suspended its conch harvesting industry in the s and implemented marine preserves in an effort to help the population rebound. So far, it's failed to do the trick.

So, experts are turning to strict recommendations to keep the Caribbean from winding up in Florida's shoes. In fact, Davis says that the Bahamas reduced export of conch in , with plans to phase it out completely by Throughout much of the Caribbean, however, the advice is inconsistently heeded. Some countries have all the needed rules but there is no enforcement," Davis notes. If you've read this far, we think you know the answer: Leave it alone, unless you are sure there is no animal inside it.