Current Project INDEX

The Puerto Rico, Naguabo Aquaculture Center is located at the Naguabo Fishing Association on the Húcares Beach near the Malecon de Naguabo. This project is a partnership between the FAU Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute Queen Conch Lab, Conservación ConCiencia, and Naguabo Fishing Association. 

This Naguabo Aquaculture Center has a queen conch hatchery and nursery for restoration and an aquaponic system that is used to grow sea vegetables for culinary dishes and coastal restoration. This Aquaculture Center serves as a demonstration and training facility for Puerto Rico and other Caribbean countries. It is supported with grants from Saltonstall-Kennedy NOAA Fisheries, USDA Agricultural Research Service, and Puerto Rico Sea Grant.

FAU Harbor Branch in partnership with The Exuma Foundation, Bahamas National Trust and Bahamas Department of Marine Resources reestablished an adult queen conch population in Moriah Harbour Cay National Park MPA in 2019. These conch were stocked in an overfished area of the Park to increase egg mass production and to protect the breeding population. As a keystone herbivore, the queen conch help improve the seagrass environment through grazing and attract an array of fauna such as turtles, rays, and fish.  (Issac et al. 2020. GCFI Proceedings)

In 2020 the Curaçao Marine Research Center (CMRC, a collaboration between the Curaçao Sea Aquarium, Sub Station Curaçao and R.V. Chapman Shipping) built a large-scale queen conch hatchery as part of new research facility. The goal of this hatchery is to improve the natural queen conch population on Curaçao by releasing cultured juveniles. Furthermore, juveniles can be delivered to interested parties and the hatchery infrastructure can be used for scientific research. 

The Sea Aquarium houses a dense population of queen conch in the dolphin pools and one has easy access to egg masses during the breeding season, 

The hatchery is financed with funds from Curaçao Sea Aquarium, the Curaçao government and recently the European Union (the Resembid program). Dr. Megan Davis is the Curaçao hatchery advisor and coach.

The Florida and West Indian fighting conch readily lay eggs in captivity and can be cultured for the seafood and aquarium trade. FAU Harbor Branch developed large scale culture techniques for these conch. The fighting and queen conch have similar characteristics in terms of biology, development, taste and meat appearance.  Harbor Branch is working on developing a business model to determine if fighting conch can be a potential species to supplement the queen conch food market if it can be grown in sufficient quantity. (Davis and Cantillo Villa. 2019. World Aquaculture Magazine, Davis and Shawl. 2005. GCFI Proceedings, Shawl et al. 2005. GCFI Proceedings)

FAU Harbor Branch in collaboration with Blue Dream Ltd, Secretaria de Agricultura y Pesca de Colombia, CORALINA and the fishers established two ranching cages in Saint Catalina within a no-take zone of the SEAFLOWER Biosphere Reserve. The cages were stocked with juvenile conch and the fishers from Old Providence monitored the conch's growth and maintained the cages for 7-months. The conch were then released in deep water to reestablish a breeding population. Funding for this 2006-2007 project was from Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund and SheilaJohnson Brutsch Charitable Trust. (Shawl et al. 2007. GCFI Proceedings)

Megan Davis was co-founder of the Caicos Conch Farm in 1984 and was instrumental in developing the commercial techniques to raise millions of larvae and small juveniles from the egg stage. The Conch Farm located on Providenciales was in operation from 1984 - 2015 and sold many conch for consumption throughout the island and also shipped conch to Florida for the aquarium trade. The techniques developed over the years by Megan and others at the Conch Farm continue to be applied to the other FAU Harbor Branch conch projects. (numerous papers - see Megan Davis Google Scholar)

The first hatchery Megan experimented with growing queen conch was in 1981 on Pine Cay with the Foundation for PRIDE. 

In nature, one conch pearl is found out of every 10,000 conch. In 2006, FAU Harbor Branch scientists, Drs. Hector Acosta-Salmon and Megan Davis, were the first to reliably produce and patent the culture of queen conch pearls. Scientists had been attempting this for 25 years, and Harbor Branch succeeded in 6 months. Conch cultured pearls are produced from a renewable resource because the conch are not sacrificed during the process and 100% of the conch survive the culturing pearl process. Each conch can produce multiple pearls. (Acosta Salmon and Davis. 2007. Aquaculture)