The Department of Fisheries and Marine Resource Management, under the Ministry of Tourism, Environment, Fisheries and Marine Affairs, Culture and Heritage, Agriculture, and Religious Affairs, in collaboration with Consultants from the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC, based in the United Kingdom) held a press conference on Friday morning to introduce the Queen Conch project called “Sustaining Queen Conch Fisheries and Livelihoods in Turks and Caicos Islands”.
The aim to collect essential new data on the queen conch fishery, ensuring that future international trade is at sustainable levels that meets the requirements of the CITES Convention (Convention in International Trade in Endangered Species), while sustaining food security in the TCI.
Queen conch is the second most economically important commercial fishery in the Turks and Caicos Islands, supporting a large export trade and significant domestic consumption by locals and visitors alike. However, the fishery throughout the Caribbean region, which previously provided a reliable and plentiful food resource, is in decline.
The sustainability of the fishery is threatened, and without a comprehensive stock assessment for the species, the region and TCI specifically could face complications for trade. We do have a closed season for conch export in the TCI, from July 15th through October 15th.
Therefore, TCI Government Departments, Fisheries and Marine Resources Management (FMRM) and Department of Environment and Coastal Resources (DECR), in Partnership with JNCC (Joint Nature Conservation Committee, UK), Marine Conservation Society, and Wild Conscience, secured project funding from the European Union in May 2022 under the “RESEMBID” (Resilience, Sustainable Energy and Marine Biodiversity Programme).
Additionally, the extent of domestic and tourist consumption is also poorly understood and under-reporting which makes it impossible to optimize fisheries production in a sustainable manner, causing economic losses to the sector.
This project will address these critical data gaps and provide new independent information which can be utilised to mitigate the risk of over-harvesting of the species.
The online version of the survey has also been released and will be available for completion until January 20th. Over 300 surveys have been completed so far, which will provide excellent data on the extent of queen conch consumption in TCI.
This 18-month long project is urgently needed to better understand the status of the queen conch population in TCI and inform future management decisions by: completing new conch abundance surveys; assessing domestic and tourist consumption; capacity building within TCI government departments; and producing a CITES non-detriment finding (NDF) to determine sustainable trade levels.
The survey can be completed at: www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/TCIQueenConch
Just a reminder to those of you listening, some of your hottest shows on the Nation’s Station have returned after Christmas Break, for example this morning the iconic Robert Hall was back with Expressions – airing on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays, then your favorite duo Cheryl-Ann Forman and Zhavago Jolly resume First Edition on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and Drexwell Seymour comes back to the airwaves with Financially Speaking on Tuesdays.
