Abstract

The queen conch, Strombus gigas is one of the principal fisheries resources in the Mexican Caribbean. However, the catch of this mollusc is in serious decline due to the over-exploitation as a result of illegal fishing. Recently, an indefinite closure of this fishery has been proposed for the whole state of Quintana Roo, based on suggestion from the fishermen, themselves. Faced with this issue, CRIP Puerto Morelos of INP, aims to use its previous experience in culturing the queen conch to refine and implement techniques of larval culture, to maintain post larval stages and to raise juveniles until they reach legal catch size, with the goal to fishermen can cultive juveniles in cages. Another studies have been based on small juveniles are released into the wild to grow to legal size, however this benefit results ID a competition between legal fisherman with illegal fisherman and natural predators. The advantage of the approach outlined here is that it guarantees a direct benefit to the legal fishermen, thereby contributing significantly to the recovery of the natural populations. The first stage of this research is small-scale larval culture in 200 L tanks, comparing the efficiency of two techniques: continuous flow and biological filtration. The raising of 200 wild juveniles would be done in 50 m2 cages in the sea. The second phase is on a big scale using 1,000 L tanks for larval and juvenile cultive; as well as a training phase, where the fisheries cooperatives are taught how to raise the juveniles in cages. Dr. Dalila Aldana, CINVESTAV, will collaborate in evaluating aspects of larval ecophysiology and the development of an optimal artificial diet for raising juveniles. The results of this study will be the development of techniques, which can be passed on to the fishermen, and to establish CRIP Puerto Morelos as a center for the distribution of larval stages of queen conch to aquaculturists at the region.

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