By RENALDO DORSETT

rdorsett@tribunemedia.net

A viral video has called into question the regulation of conch harvesting and overfishing practices despite consistent warnings of “serial depletion” in recent years.

The recent video shows fishermen loading crammed pallets of conch shells onto the mailboat “Capt Gurth Dean” at an undisclosed location while debating the size of the haul.

Eric Carey, executive director of the Bahamas National Trust, said that while the action in the video does not implicate illegal activity, it does display that further conservation measures must be scrutinised and regulated.

“The video raises concerns obviously because there is certainly a lot of conch being harvested,” he said.

“Without being able to inspect the catch itself, one can’t assume that they are doing anything illegal because once the conchs are mature, unfortunately, we currently do not have any limits on the number of conchs that can be harvested.”

With conch harvested in many remote locations throughout the country, Carey said a working relationship between the local fishing community and the Department of Marine Resources can improve regulatory practices and ultimately, the conservation of the species.

“With that video, it would have been very easy to have a fisheries officer visit that community when these large numbers of conch are coming in and do a visual inspection of the stock to see whether or not most of the stock is mature. Once they satisfy themselves that the vast majority are mature then they can satisfy themselves that no laws are being broken. Until we can carry out inspections of those large harvests, and until we can inspect the conch in the shell then they cannot verify the conch is mature,” he said.

“If you are going for a large haul like that, it should be required by law that you inform the Fisheries Department, and tell the Department of Marine Resources that you are bringing in a large shipment into a certain location, therefore you request an inspection. The government must then respond to that because you can’t have fishermen with thousands of pounds of conch waiting to be inspected.”

Through the “Conchservation” project, several recommendations were made to the government of The Bahamas, including banning the export of conch, mandating that all conch be landed in its shell, and increasing the minimum lip thickness of harvested conch.

“We want to ensure that there is a size limit set in place with respect to the thickness of the lip - that is what is really important in terms of the breeding and determining whether the conch has reached sexual maturity.,” said Mr Carey.

“We also recommended that they land in the shell so that you have an opportunity for a fisheries officer from the Department of Marine Resources to inspect the catch to ensure that the vast majority are mature. The problem that we are having is that we are harvesting too many - we are seeing localized shortages of conch and we are harvesting too many immatures.”

“Exports were banned, but that is only a small part of the picture. It was a positive move by the government. There are in draft regulations now, mandates to increase the lip thickness to ensure that we know that fishermen are hopefully targeting mature individuals and the third thing is that we believe they have in draft regulations that conch must be landed in the shell.”

The Community Conch project commissioned a study from 2009-2017 measuring over 3,000 conchs from over 40 sites throughout the country.

The study’s findings, published in “Reviews in Fisheries and Science and Aquaculture”, discovered the country’s population of mature conch failed to reach the minimum number required for long-term sustainability.

“We have played ‘Russian Roulette’ with our fisheries for a number of years and until and unless we decide that more effective management is necessary then we will put fishermen’s future at risk. If we don’t work with them to secure their future to ensure that they are harvesting sustainably, then their livelihood, their industry, is going to be short lived because the system is going to collapse,” Mr Carey said.

“It is in their best interest to work with the Department of Marine Resources to ensure that the catch is sustainable, otherwise there will be no future for conch in The Bahamas.”