Well, I don't know about welks (what the heck is a welk?), but conchs are cultural, the minute people start 'missing' their conch salad, all kind of outrage will start, about, "why wasn't the public notified and steps taken to ensure that conch was preserved," yadda, yadda, yadda. The problem too is, that if we substituted welks for conch in the past, due to depletion, what are we going to substitute it for? Seven years to wait for conch to return is a bit much. We need a conch farm. Where's Lurker?, he can explain more about this I think.


There is a conch farm in Turks and Caicos.


http://www.caicosconchfarm.com/

Rumor is they tried to start this up in the Bahamas,but with all the red tape and requests fa bribes, we run dem.:footmouth

:shaky: hey i een dat ole ya know. a welk look like a lil conch but was gray and dark. ven ya pull it out da shell it looked like a conch with the umbilical cord still attached. all i know is mummy dem say i usta kill it. i don't know if i could eat it now doe.:shaky:


The last time I had welks was 10 years ago,and I KNOW I 'ein old! Boy dey was good eatin'!

Full a protein....

"Conch is quickly becoming a rising star food with top chefs from the USA and round the World choosing to use Turks and Caicos Conch Farmed products in their new dishes. The Conch Farm specialises in exporting the conch including Pacific Rim, Ocean Escargot and Island Princess Conch and claims to raise the only "Caribbean Queens fit for a King"" - www.caicosconchfarm.com

I need to go and visit them. Franchise!

I agree. We do need a closed season for conch.
Even a two month closed season would do. We could stagger it with the crawfish and lobster season to ease the pain.
It will hurt worse if all the conch is gone....


We know have a closed season for crawfish and grouper but neither are working, the only people not getting crawfish and grouper offseason are legitimate fisherman. I recently told Minister Cartwright (and he knows from experience too ) two places where Dominicans can be caught TODAY (because of the full moon) spearing Grouper but a guarantee no arrest will be made. I spoke to a fellow fisherman from Long Island about a hour ago and he told me several Dominican boats were in that same area a few days ago. On opening day of the crawfish season we find many rotten heads around traps and have seen dominicans about 20 miles off South Andros shores in the summertime. Although I agree something needs to be done it makes no sense putting a closed season on anything unless you`re going to be able to police it. The Dominicans know our Banks now as good as Bahamians because they are employed on Bahamian boats and when they return home for off season they carry back the GPS readings of where they have been with Bahamians and bring their factory ships here.

I hope with the additional fleet of boats the RBDF is getting, they can sink a few of them boats, leave the crew for he sharks and leave. Word gets out ... opps..International Incident

:shaky: hey i een dat ole ya know. a welk look like a lil conch but was gray and dark. ven ya pull it out da shell it looked like a conch with the umbilical cord still attached. all i know is mummy dem say i usta kill it. i don't know if i could eat it now doe.:shaky:

Wife loves Welks, but only see them here in New Providence around the rocks at Clifton.

I know I have taken a good few thousand.
It was nothing to go out and dive 300/400 to as hi as 700 on a day trip. This was diving with out any breathing aparatus.

Yes the conch are decreasing and its not going to stop between the bahamains and the outsiders. You can make all the laws you want, they aren't enforced. I'm gone out to banks and picked up the few conchs that were up to measure; passed by the same spot later that day ppl diving every little one they can find.

Whelks are still available here in Andros, Can't beat a good whelk and curb salad.

I think welks may be conch cousin. They all taste good together.

Whelk as found in the Bahamas or it's proper name is Cittarium pica or West Indian Top Shell (for those that don't know what one is)

http://www.uprh.edu/~cgarcia/ecologiacostanera/Clase/rocosa/CIT.JPG

I remember going boating, and jumping off of the boat, swimming to some rock-like structures and digging for something... Would those have been curbs? (I think that's what my cousins called them.)

I remember going boating, and jumping off of the boat, swimming to some rock-like structures and digging for something... Would those have been curbs? (I think that's what my cousins called them.)
They may well have been, curbs stick to the rocks like glue and have to be pried off, and then dug out, they are orangey in colour, usually quite small about an inch and a half long and about 1/2 an inch wide. Quite a delicacy!

Am sitting here trying to find out what their real name is but am getting nowhere.

Whelks are still available here in Andros, Can't beat a good whelk and curb salad.

We still get whelks here in Abaco...Nothing like a good stew whelks with white rice! And my momma makes soup using whelks..she puts them through an old fashioned meat grinder before putting them in the soup! Lemme stop..I need to lose a few pounds and stew 'een in no diet!!!

Halfway through mashin' one cracked conch snack from Bamboo Shack on Saturday, I stopped and thought to myself, "Man, dis is plenty conch!". In truth, I was "stalled", but I then started trying to figure out how many conch(s) were used in that one snack. Inevitably, this led me to the question:

How many pounds of conch are used by Bamboo Shack on a daily basis?

And what about all of the conch used to make snacks/dinners at other local restaurants? Not to mention conch chowder, conch fritters, conch burgers, streamed conch, conch salad, scorched conch, and even conch fried rice from the Chinese?

Will there be enough conch for future generations?

I've heard that Dominican poachers tend to be lazy, so they gut the conch and throw the shells back into our waters, causing new generations of conch to avoid that area 'cause "conch don't like to smell he own 'blood'". With practices like that going on, combined with the healthy market we have here in The Bahamas, what effect are we really having on Conch population numbers?

Anyone know or care to make an educated guess?
I guess we'll move to having Crack Calamari instead