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This old, bleached out shell of the queen conch had originally been fished, as you can see by the cut in the spire. This cut is made by the fisher using a machete. This is to sever the columellar muscle, which in life is the main structure that holds and retracts the soft parts of the animal into the shell. This shell had been thrown up onto the coast during a storm. Unfortunately almost all of the individuals fished are subadult, and therefore they have not reproduced yet.
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Lovely 5.5 inch empty shell. First pic is in situ.
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Lovely 5.5 inch empty shell. First pic is in situ.
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Lovely 5.5 inch empty shell. First pic is in situ.
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Found this white shell washed up on the beach. In the 2nd photo you can see other items I collected that day. The brownish queen conch is 5.5 inches, for comparison.
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Found this white shell washed up on the beach. In the 2nd photo you can see other items I collected that day. The brownish queen conch is 5.5 inches, for comparison.
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These are opercula from Queen Conchs. A fisher had dumped them on the beach from his fishing boat I presume. They cut the columellar muscle through the shell in the boat while they are out at sea, taking the soft parts and dumping the shells overboard. That makes it hard to know if they are breaking the law by taking subadult conchs, which is almost always the case unfortunately.
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Found on the beach of Jones Bay, and placed by the front door. With these shells, that were all fished, it is easy to see the difference between the juveniles, which are illegally harvested as food, to sell to the hotels and so on, and the one big adult with the fully flared out lip. These fine sea snails take about 5 years to reach adulthood but can live maybe another 20 years after that, if they are not captured. However the conchs off Nevis almost never get to adult size, let alone living to a ripe old age.
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This is the shell of a young conch that died of natural causes, instead of being fishes. You can tell that because there is no cut in the spire of the shell.
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This is the shell of a young conch that died of natural causes, instead of being fishes. You can tell that because there is no cut in the spire of the shell.
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Found in shallow waters of the Caribbean Sea.