Hot queen conch seeks cool mates: Florida’s new ‘speed dating’ service to save endangered shellfish

Of the many novel initiatives dreamed up by scientists to protect threatened species from the ravages of record ocean temperatures , Florida’s new “speed dating for shellfish” programme might be about the most extraordinary.

Researchers are acting as matchmakers for the queen conch, a mollusc with iconic status in the Florida Keys, by removing them from the heat of their nearshore habitat and relocating them to deeper, cooler waters where a plethora of potential new partners awaits.

In the summer it gets too hot. The animals shut down. Instead of reproduction, they shunt their energy into survival

Gabriel Delgado, FWC

The small but dedicated team from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) are running a kind of undersea Tinder for the spiny-shelled gastropods, whose numbers have suffered a near-calamitous decline in recent years as sea temperatures have soared.

The change in environment, the researchers believe, encourages conches, which are largely lethargic and infertile in excessively hot shallow water, to mingle freely and mate in more suitable surroundings with a fresh cluster of likely companions.

“Nearshore conch are destined for a life of celibacy, and we’re trying to fix that,” says Gabriel Delgado, a research scientist and conch specialist with the FWC who oversaw the relocation of more than 200 tagged conch this summer from the coast near Marathon, a city in the middle of the archipelago, to an offshore reef in the Upper Keys.

“It’s like, ‘Hey folks, you guys are having trouble meeting another conch. Well, here’s some more to the party, now you can open up to each other a little bit more.’”

Delgado says the project is intended to be a vital step towards preserving and restoring a species listed by the US government in February as threatened under the Endangered Species Act . The Florida population of queen conches, once prevalent throughout the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and around Bermuda, plummeted from an estimated 700,000 in 2017 to 126,000 five years later, according to FWC figures.

Delgado lists other contributory factors to the demise, including hurricanes Irma in 2017 and Ian in 2022 that smothered and killed large numbers; and the ever-present threat of poaching. Harvesting queen conch has been illegal in Florida since the 1970s, but its meat remains a popular delicacy.

However, Delgado and his team have more recently been focusing on Florida’s extreme ocean heat as an explanation. Last year, the surface temperature off the Florida Keys was recorded at 101.19F (38.43C) , believed to be a global record.

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“It’s because we’re dealing with very shallow water, too cold in the winter, OK in the spring, and in the summer it gets too hot,” says Delgado. “The animals shut down. Instead of going into reproduction, they shunt their energy into basically survival and never really develop their reproductive organs very well.”

The idea of relocation came from similar but smaller-scale experiments earlier this century in which nearshore conches were moved to offshore breeding aggregations, and quickly established themselves as “spawning capable”, he explains.

“They were mating, they were laying eggs, but unfortunately we never followed up the next year to see if they were indistinguishable from the native offshore conch,” he says.

Finding nearshore conch for relocation this year was a community effort. “We asked the public to keep their eyes open. They reported them online, some people emailed, and we used community volunteers to gather up the 208 that we moved in June to an offshore aggregation,” he says.

The team made the first of at least 12 monthly checks on the relocated conches in mid-August and was encouraged to find they were all still there. “So far, things are going as expected given the short timeframe. [On future visits] we’re recording who is mating, who is laying eggs,” says Delgado.

Queen conches are highly regarded in the Florida Keys, a 125-mile chain of tropical islands known as the Conch Republic , where locals refer to themselves as conches. “If you are born in the Keys you’re a saltwater conch, if you have lived there seven years consecutively you’re a freshwater conch. It’s part of the identity of the place,” says Delgado.

The project is supported by the Fish and Wildlife Foundation of Florida , a non-profit organisation that raises funds to assist the work of the FWC.

“It’s a creative solution using a partnership of citizen volunteers and scientists to help a Florida protected species find their shell-mate,” says Andrew Walker, the group’s president and chief executive. “And by putting the conch back in the Conch Republic, the project will increase the health of Florida’s coral reef.”