It was a hot summer day
on July 19th, 1975.

I was 16 years old.

I was sailing the Bahamas
with my family.

It was a really magical time.

The fresh air, the sunshine,

the sparkling seas 
were filling me with joy.

And then, I fell in love.

I fell madly, hopelessly in love ...
with a conch.

It was not just any ordinary conch.

It was the queen of the sea.

It was a magnificent queen conch.

You know that feeling you get

when you've met someone really special.

You're visiting a beautiful place,
reading a good book

and you want it to last forever.

That's how I felt about the queen conch.

I just loved it so dearly,
I wanted to protect it forever.

And it was on that day,
that began my lifelong journey

and my pioneering dedication
to grow millions of conch

to see the waters
of the Caribbean and Florida.

My captivation
for the conch showed up

in my semester reports at college.

And then my college connections led me

to the Caribbean where, at 21,
I was living in a tent

on a very small island,
working in a makeshift laboratory,

figuring out how to grow the queen conch.

As you can imagine,
my parents were thrilled.

(Laughter)

Four years of college,
and their daughter was a farmer.

Well, a conch farmer, cultivating the sea,

like the farmer tills the land.

And that led me to being a co-founder

of the world's first
commercial conch farm.

That summer, while sailing with my family,

the Bahamians were so gracious.

They taught me how to collect the conch,

and also how to knock the conch,

and by that you take a hole
so that you can remove

the conch meat out so you can eat it.

The conch is a very important
protein source

for the Caribbean diet.

It's also a very important herbivore

or vegetarian in the seagrass meadows

of the turqoise waters
of the Caribbean and Florida.

It holds a position of majesty
in the islands.

Certainly a species
paid attention to, and I did.

But I have a question for you:

Did you ever wonder
what the world would be like

without the queen conch?

I know. Some of you are thinking:

"This is the first time
I've ever heard of a queen conch."

Well, I understand.

But some of you might be thinking:

"Well, it's a beautiful shell or a snail."

You can put it on your mantlepiece

or some of you might know it
as a tasty conch fritter.

Perhaps you've heard
of the majestic eagle

or the cuddly panda bear,
or the might whale but I ask:

Why not the queen of the sea,

the glorious conch that glides
so gracefully across the sea floor?

So many endangered species
such as these,

including the queen conch
are threatened with extinction.

In nature, between one and five species
each year disappear.

That rate is accelerating
due to human activities

such as overfishing,
such as the introduction

of exotic species
and often climate change.

Now dozens of species are disappearing,

not yearly but everyday.

So as a conch farmer
I was working really hard

to make sure to sustain the fate
of the queen conch,

and I remember that very first time
I saw a conch larvae,

using a microscope and I thought:

"How is it possible
for this itty bitty tiny thing,

just the size of a head of a pin
could grow into something so big

to a five-pound conch?"

Well, you and I started
that small and smaller,

so it must be possible.

This conch larvae with its long lobes

floats freely in the ocean currents,

and it sometimes doesn't survive
because it gets eaten

by larval fish and also
other zooplankton.

Conch lay about 500,000 eggs
and less than 1% survive.

That's right, less than 1%.
This is all part of nature.

About a month later,
as they have been drifting in the sea,

they settle on the bottom of the ocean
in the seagrass beds

and they start parading
across the bottom, looking for food.

They start to get a heavier shell
by that time.

By about a year old, they have spines.

What's really amazing is that that larvae
was the very tip of the shell

and it just kept getting bigger.

It keeps the exact same shell
its entire life.

And it lives to be about 40 years old.

So even with this shell,
it's still vulnerable

to predators, such as crabs, octopus,

fish and often turtles.
But their greatest danger,

as you probably already guessed,
are you and me. People.

About ten years ago,

there was twice as much conch
that were being exported

from the Caribbean to the US sea ports
than there are today.

There are regulations in place
that help to ensure

there's sustainable fishing of conch
but there's also overfishing.

I don't know if you know this,

but this conch takes almost
three years to grow this size

which is a legal size for fishing.

That's a substantial amount of time.

I suppose you might say,
it's not exactly a fast food supply.

As a conch farmer,
I was working really hard

and helped to grow hundreds
of thousands of conch in big tanks

and also on the sea floor in sea cages.

But really this was a drop in the bucket.

We need more conch farms,

and that is still the case today.

As the conch were being fished,
a most exquisite gem

was making its way around the world

as the only pick pearl of the sea.

This hidden jewel is rare.

One one in ten thousand conch
in nature produce a pearl like this

with such a luster
and such flickering flame.

It is really quite amazing

that if an irritant get lodged
inside the conch,

it turns into something
of such deep beauty.

Could there be a lesson there for us?

Could our irritations turn into something
so beautiful and rewarding?

I moved from the Caribbean to Florida

where I continued to be a conch farmer

at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute,

and I teamed up
with my talented co-inventor,

Dr. Héctor Acosta
and, of course, some more.

And together we teamed up
with his years of experience...

He came from Mexico.

With years of experience
growing oyster pearls

and with my knowledge of growing conch,

we set out together
to discover how to grow

the queen conch pearls.

In 2006, Harbor Branch made history.

We produced a couple of hundred
conch pearls.

each taking twelve months to grow
to the size of an oyster pearl.

Gemologists everywhere were so excited
by this breakthrough.

Today, technology has been licensed,
and with meticulous precision,

we continue to refine the techniques
as we speak.

So from conch farmer, to pearl farmer. 
I wonder what's next.

I know one thing for sure,

we need to bring the queen conch back,

just like the success story of the eagle.

We need to work together to find solutions
for disappearing species.

For you seafood lovers,

learn where your seafood comes from

and eat sustainable sources of seafood.

If you enjoy volunteering,

find a local conservation organization
and lend a helping hand.

When you donate to a cause,
you help our oceans on our planet.

So the next time you are asked:

"Have you ever wondered
what the world would be like

without the queen conch?"

I want you to remember this adorable conch

with the charming eyes and say:

"Restore her to power."

(Applause)