Abstract

The large gastropod Strombus gigas (queen conch) represents one of the most important fisheries of the Caribbean region with a total annual value of approximately $40 million US (Appeldoorn, 1994). Queen conch stocks have declined significantly throughout the region over the last 10-20 years, and various forms of catch and size limits have been imposed in most nations (Appeldoorn, et al., 1987; Berg and Olsen, 1989; Appeldoorn, 1994). Despite complete closure of the fishery in the United States in 1985, queen conch stocks have shown little sign of recovery (Berg and Glazer, in press). This lack of recovery is poorly understood, in part because of limited knowledge of early life history, larval abundance, and recruitment processes.\Detailed larval descriptions for identifying larvae of the different Strombus species (Davis, et al., 1993) and the first analyses of veliger abundance (Stoner, et al., 1992; Posada and Appeldoorn, 1994; Stoner, et al., 1994) appeared only recently. The recruitment problem is compounded by the fact that queen conch larvae spend approximately 3 weeks in the water column and may drift hundreds of kilometers from parental stocks before settling to the benthos. As a result, local populations are probably replenished from distant sources, and stock management for queen conch is a multinational problem (Berg and Olsen, 1989).\This report represents a preliminary analysis of the relationship between larval supply and population distribution and year-class strength. Full analyses are underway and will be reported in the future (e.g. Stoner, et al., in review). Because of important correlations recently observed between larval supply and population size in queen conch, it is critical to consider population dynamics in terms of larval ecology and metapopulation theory. These concepts are introduced.

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