Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission associate research scientist Dr. Ellery Lennon measures the total length of a Queen Conch before relocating it to deeper waters where the snail has a higher chance of successfully mating, after a dive with FWC on Monday, June 10, 2024, in Miami, Florida. (D.A. Varela/Miami Herald/TNS)
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission associate research scientist Gabriel Delgado scuba dives as he rehomes Queen Conchs to deeper waters where the snails have a higher chance of successfully mating, during a dive with FWC on Monday, June 10, 2024, in Miami, Florida. (D.A. Varela/Miami Herald/TNS)
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission associate research scientist William Sharp snorkels at the surface while collecting Queen Conch during a dive with FWC on Monday, June 10, 2024, in Miami, Florida. FWC staff and volunteers gather onshore specimen to be moved to an offshore location for a higher chance of successfully reproducing. (D.A. Varela/Miami Herald/TNS)
In hot water
Back on the boat and under a wet tarp, the ribbon-festooned conchs moved faster than they ever have in their lives to another spot an hour north.
Here, the scientists strapped on dive gear and plunged into waters that were more than 20 feet deep, but a clear, electric blue. They gently placed the conchs on the sea floor, where they nearly disappeared in the sand and sea grass.
Here, the researchers hope, they will stay cool enough to continue maturing and hopefully start mating.
The distance from land also makes this spot attractive for another reason — poachers. It’s been illegal to harvest or even touch a Florida queen conch since 1985, and yet the FWC still catches poachers regularly.
“We know it’s happening, we just don’t know what the scale of it is,” Delgado said.
He recalled an incident back in 2010, when he and another diver were checking on a conch population at the Eastern Dry Rocks Sanctuary south of Key West. They swam closer to one, then realized it had a gaping hole in the crown, and there was no snail inside. The researchers found nearly 200 of these “knock shells” that afternoon, Delgado said.
“At the time, based off our estimate, that was 10% of that aggregation that someone has poached,” he said.
More than a decade later, poaching is still an issue. A video of a slew of knock shells at two spots in Key West drew attention this month, with the poster calling the poachers “scumbags.”
If the conchs manage to stay out of the hands of poachers and avoid getting buried in sand by a passing hurricane, there’s still the heat to handle.
While it doesn’t seem like high water temperatures are enough, on their own, to kill the conchs, Delgado worries that increasingly warm waters could worsen the breeding issues he’s already seen for decades.
Last year, he and another researcher looked at changes over time for sea surface temperatures in the Keys from 2004 to 2020. They found that overall temperatures were rising, and some spots were getting hotter than others.
Those new hot spots, which are more likely than neighboring spots to measure water temperatures higher than 86 degrees Fahrenheit, overlapped with 58% of conch breeding zones, they found.
That could be a problem for the continued survival of the Florida queen conch.
“If sea surface temperatures keep getting warmer, then yes, it’s a concern,” he said. “These tropical species are already operating at their thermal tolerance limits. If you push it a little bit further they don’t do well.”
This data, which has yet to be published, helped inform NOAA Fisheries’
