N 26 42.300 W 077 12.230
This morning the sky is clear and the wind is totally calm. We left Marsh Harbor at 0730 en route for Green Turtle Cay. Motoring along at a lazy 4 knots with the autopilot steering gave the perfect opportunity to inspect the bottom.
The Sea of Abaco between Marsh Harbor and The Whale is 8 to 10 feet deep at low tide. Much of it is covered with white sand. The sandy parts are nearly featureless, no plants no anything. Every 60 seconds or so however, we could spot a big star fish. The star fish appear ochre red in color which contrasts greatly with the blue green reflections from the white sand. Some of those star fish were enormous, ranging from one foot to 1.5 feet in diameter. I think that the star fish live on shell
fish, mostly conch, so having well fed star fish implies a healthy conch population. I didn't spot any conch familys on the sandy bottom though. What do the conch eat?
After 5 miles of white bottom, we came upon a 2 mile stretch where the bottom is covered with sea grass. The sea grass appears black, reflecting no sunlight, and making it hard to see the bottom at all. However, there are breaks in the dark color. Rocks, creatures, and scars expose white spots every once in a while. I did spot a big conch in the grass. The color of their shells contrasts better with the grass than with the sand.
All this time, I was trolling with a fish line and a lure. We have been following all the advice we got from every source on catching fish in the Bahamas, so far with zero luck. On this passage though, I did catch a little 4 inch fish hardly bigger than the lure. I threw him back and he swam away. I think we have to catch more conch. One fishing tip we haven't tried yet is to collect the slime that surrounds a conch body. Conch slime smeared on a lure, is supposed to get the fish all excited
and biting.
How does the food chain work here? I would like to learn more. It appears that most of the shallows in the banks where the water is only 8 feet deep, are almost devoid of life. Perhaps that's true. On the other hand, not all food is visible to us. There are lots protozoan life forms that feed other life forms, yet are invisible to us.
We saw one pod of dolphins but no manatees so far in the Bahamas.
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Conch Trivia:
ReplyDeleteConch eat a variety of algae as juveniles and adults, but they also eat detritus or diatoms found on blades of Thalassia testudinum, which is a common type of seagrass. Conch use a long, flexible snout-like organ called a proboscis to eat.
1 in 10,000 conchs will produce a pearl!
The conch is listed as a threatened species by CITES (Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species). In many parts of our country, conch populations are already at or below the Caribbean Fisheries Management Council's definition of overfished.
There are two clear warning signs that we are depleting our Bahamian conch fishery. Firstly, we have to go further to find conch now that the near-shore fishery has been depleted. There are numerous reports of people using hookahs to catch conch in areas that were once natural refuges since the animals were too deep to be caught. Secondly, although it is illegal to catch immature conch (the "rollers" that do not yet have a flared lip), an increasing proportion of the conch now landed are juveniles.