WEBVTT

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

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I was 16 years old.

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I was sailing the Bahamas
with my family.


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It was a really magical time.

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The fresh air, the sunshine,


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the sparkling seas 
were filling me with joy.

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And then, I fell in love.

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

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It was not just any ordinary conch.


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It was the queen of the sea.

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It was a magnificent queen conch.

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You know that feeling you get


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when you've met someone really special.

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

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and you want it to last forever.

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That's how I felt about the queen conch.

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

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

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and my pioneering dedication
to grow millions of conch

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to see the waters
of the Caribbean and Florida.

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My captivation
for the conch showed up

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in my semester reports at college.

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And then my college connections led me


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



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


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figuring out how to grow the queen conch.

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As you can imagine,
my parents were thrilled.

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(Laughter)

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

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Well, a conch farmer, cultivating the sea,


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like the farmer tills the land.

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And that led me to being a co-founder


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of the world's first
commercial conch farm.

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That summer, while sailing with my family,

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the Bahamians were so gracious.

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They taught me how to collect the conch,

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and also how to knock the conch,

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

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the conch meat out so you can eat it.

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The conch is a very important
protein source


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for the Caribbean diet.

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It's also a very important herbivore

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or vegetarian in the seagrass meadows

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of the turqoise waters
of the Caribbean and Florida.

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It holds a position of majesty
in the islands.

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Certainly a species
paid attention to, and I did.

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But I have a question for you:

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Did you ever wonder
what the world would be like

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without the queen conch?

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I know. Some of you are thinking:

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

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Well, I understand.

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But some of you might be thinking:

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

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You can put it on your mantlepiece

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

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Perhaps you've heard
of the majestic eagle


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

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Why not the queen of the sea,

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

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So many endangered species
such as these,

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including the queen conch
are threatened with extinction.

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

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That rate is accelerating
due to human activities

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such as overfishing,
such as the introduction

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of exotic species
and often climate change.

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Now dozens of species are disappearing,


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not yearly but everyday.

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So as a conch farmer
I was working really hard

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

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

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using a microscope and I thought:

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

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

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to a five-pound conch?"

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Well, you and I started
that small and smaller,


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so it must be possible.

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This conch larvae with its long lobes

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floats freely in the ocean currents,

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and it sometimes doesn't survive
because it gets eaten

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by larval fish and also
other zooplankton.

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

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

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

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

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

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They start to get a heavier shell
by that time.


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By about a year old, they have spines.

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

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and it just kept getting bigger.

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It keeps the exact same shell
its entire life.

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And it lives to be about 40 years old.

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So even with this shell,
it's still vulnerable


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to predators, such as crabs, octopus,

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fish and often turtles.
But their greatest danger,


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


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About ten years ago,

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there was twice as much conch
that were being exported

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

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There are regulations in place
that help to ensure

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

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I don't know if you know this,

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but this conch takes almost
three years to grow this size

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which is a legal size for fishing.


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That's a substantial amount of time.

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

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As a conch farmer,
I was working really hard


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


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and also on the sea floor in sea cages.

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But really this was a drop in the bucket.


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We need more conch farms,

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and that is still the case today.

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As the conch were being fished,
a most exquisite gem

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was making its way around the world


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as the only pick pearl of the sea.

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This hidden jewel is rare.



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

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with such a luster
and such flickering flame.

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It is really quite amazing

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that if an irritant get lodged
inside the conch,

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it turns into something
of such deep beauty.

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Could there be a lesson there for us?

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Could our irritations turn into something
so beautiful and rewarding?

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I moved from the Caribbean to Florida

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where I continued to be a conch farmer

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at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute,

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and I teamed up
with my talented co-inventor,

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

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

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He came from Mexico.

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With years of experience
growing oyster pearls

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and with my knowledge of growing conch,

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we set out together
to discover how to grow

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the queen conch pearls.

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In 2006, Harbor Branch made history.


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We produced a couple of hundred
conch pearls.

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

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Gemologists everywhere were so excited
by this breakthrough.

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

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we continue to refine the techniques
as we speak.

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

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I know one thing for sure,

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we need to bring the queen conch back,

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just like the success story of the eagle.

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

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For you seafood lovers, 


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learn where your seafood comes from

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and eat sustainable sources of seafood.

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If you enjoy volunteering,

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find a local conservation organization
and lend a helping hand.

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

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So the next time you are asked:

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"Have you ever wondered
what the world would be like

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without the queen conch?"


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I want you to remember this adorable conch

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with the charming eyes and say:

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"Restore her to power."

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(Applause)