Transcriber: Helena Galani Reviewer: Reiko Bovee
It was a hot summer day on July 19th, 1975.
I was 16 years old.
I was sailing the Bahamas with my family.
It was a really magical time.
The fresh air, the sunshine,
the sparkling seas were filling me with joy.
And then, I fell in love.
I fell madly, hopelessly in love ... with a conch.
It was not just any ordinary conch.
It was the queen of the sea.
It was a magnificent queen conch.
You know that feeling you get
when you've met someone really special.
You're visiting a beautiful place, reading a good book
and you want it to last forever.
That's how I felt about the queen conch.
I just loved it so dearly, I wanted to protect it forever.
And it was on that day, that began my lifelong journey
and my pioneering dedication to grow millions of conch
to see the waters of the Caribbean and Florida.
My captivation for the conch showed up
in my semester reports at college.
And then my college connections led me
to the Caribbean where, at 21, I was living in a tent
on a very small island, working in a makeshift laboratory,
figuring out how to grow the queen conch.
As you can imagine, my parents were thrilled.
(Laughter)
Four years of college, and their daughter was a farmer.
Well, a conch farmer, cultivating the sea,
like the farmer tills the land.
And that led me to being a co-founder
of the world's first commercial conch farm.
That summer, while sailing with my family,
the Bahamians were so gracious.
They taught me how to collect the conch,
and also how to knock the conch,
and by that you take a hole so that you can remove
the conch meat out so you can eat it.
The conch is a very important protein source
for the Caribbean diet.
It's also a very important herbivore
or vegetarian in the seagrass meadows
of the turqoise waters of the Caribbean and Florida.
It holds a position of majesty in the islands.
Certainly a species paid attention to, and I did.
But I have a question for you:
Did you ever wonder what the world would be like
without the queen conch?
I know. Some of you are thinking:
"This is the first time I've ever heard of a queen conch."
Well, I understand.
But some of you might be thinking:
"Well, it's a beautiful shell or a snail."
You can put it on your mantlepiece
or some of you might know it as a tasty conch fritter.
Perhaps you've heard of the majestic eagle
or the cuddly panda bear, or the might whale but I ask:
Why not the queen of the sea,
the glorious conch that glides so gracefully across the sea floor?
So many endangered species such as these,
including the queen conch are threatened with extinction.
In nature, between one and five species each year disappear.
That rate is accelerating due to human activities
such as overfishing, such as the introduction
of exotic species and often climate change.
Now dozens of species are disappearing,
not yearly but everyday.
So as a conch farmer I was working really hard
to make sure to sustain the fate of the queen conch,
and I remember that very first time I saw a conch larvae,
using a microscope and I thought:
"How is it possible for this itty bitty tiny thing,
just the size of a head of a pin could grow into something so big
to a five-pound conch?"
Well, you and I started that small and smaller,
so it must be possible.
This conch larvae with its long lobes
floats freely in the ocean currents,
and it sometimes doesn't survive because it gets eaten
by larval fish and also other zooplankton.
Conch lay about 500,000 eggs and less than 1% survive.
That's right, less than 1%. This is all part of nature.
About a month later, as they have been drifting in the sea,
they settle on the bottom of the ocean in the seagrass beds
and they start parading across the bottom, looking for food.
They start to get a heavier shell by that time.
By about a year old, they have spines.
What's really amazing is that that larvae was the very tip of the shell
and it just kept getting bigger.
It keeps the exact same shell its entire life.
And it lives to be about 40 years old.
So even with this shell, it's still vulnerable
to predators, such as crabs, octopus,
fish and often turtles. But their greatest danger,
as you probably already guessed, are you and me. People.
About ten years ago,
there was twice as much conch that were being exported
from the Caribbean to the US sea ports than there are today.
There are regulations in place that help to ensure
there's sustainable fishing of conch but there's also overfishing.
I don't know if you know this,
but this conch takes almost three years to grow this size
which is a legal size for fishing.
That's a substantial amount of time.
I suppose you might say, it's not exactly a fast food supply.
As a conch farmer, I was working really hard
and helped to grow hundreds of thousands of conch in big tanks
and also on the sea floor in sea cages.
But really this was a drop in the bucket.
We need more conch farms,
and that is still the case today.
As the conch were being fished, a most exquisite gem
was making its way around the world
as the only pick pearl of the sea.
This hidden jewel is rare.
One one in ten thousand conch in nature produce a pearl like this
with such a luster and such flickering flame.
It is really quite amazing
that if an irritant get lodged inside the conch,
it turns into something of such deep beauty.
Could there be a lesson there for us?
Could our irritations turn into something so beautiful and rewarding?
I moved from the Caribbean to Florida
where I continued to be a conch farmer
at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute,
and I teamed up with my talented co-inventor,
Dr. Héctor Acosta and, of course, some more.
And together we teamed up with his years of experience...
He came from Mexico.
With years of experience growing oyster pearls
and with my knowledge of growing conch,
we set out together to discover how to grow
the queen conch pearls.
In 2006, Harbor Branch made history.
We produced a couple of hundred conch pearls.
each taking twelve months to grow to the size of an oyster pearl.
Gemologists everywhere were so excited by this breakthrough.
Today, technology has been licensed, and with meticulous precision,
we continue to refine the techniques as we speak.
So from conch farmer, to pearl farmer. I wonder what's next.
I know one thing for sure,
we need to bring the queen conch back,
just like the success story of the eagle.
We need to work together to find solutions for disappearing species.
For you seafood lovers,
learn where your seafood comes from
and eat sustainable sources of seafood.
If you enjoy volunteering,
find a local conservation organization and lend a helping hand.
When you donate to a cause, you help our oceans on our planet.
So the next time you are asked:
"Have you ever wondered what the world would be like
without the queen conch?"
I want you to remember this adorable conch
with the charming eyes and say:
"Restore her to power."
(Applause)