Queen conch (strombus gigas) have provided a small but profitable industrial fishery. This fishery is most profitable of all national fishery activity and Jamaica was the top producer of queen conch in the Caribbean region between 1993 and 2000 and is still a major producer and exporter. But many persons do not know how this fishery works and why it is so successful. Conch fishing in Jamaica up to 1990 was a small-scale activity using free-diving at various locations around the island’s coral reefs.
Based on densities of conch on other fishing grounds around the Caribbean, a series of basic management methods were requested and introduced in the early 1993. These measures were centered mainly on manipulation of fishing effort and sought to reduce effort by limiting entry to the fishery. Two management methods that were implemented involved conducting diver surveys and limiting the number of industrial fishing companies which operate in the fishery based on the simple fact that the stock of queen conch is not large enough to sustain a larger number of these specialized large-scale fishers. One of the areas that industrial producers do involves employing a large number of minimally trained divers to collect the queen conch at the sea floor at a depth of about 20 to 25 meters. The implementation of a new GPS-based electronic vessel position monitoring system is a major breakthrough for proper conch fishery management.
