Conservation Concerns

The Queen Conch has experienced population decline due to overharvesting for its meat, and is now listed under CITES Appendix II. International trade is regulated to prevent further loss. Some areas have healthy populations while others have collapsed.

In Florida and parts of the Bahamas, harvesting is completely banned. Many other regions have seasonal limits, size restrictions and harvest quotas. These protections are important for conservation, but they also make conch pearls even harder to come by.

Experimental Culturing

In the late 2000s, researchers at Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute developed a technique to culture pearls in the Queen Conch. Adapted methods from traditional pearl farming, they implanted both tissue and tissue-bead grafts into the conch’s mantle to stimulate pearl formation.

The team produced more than 200 beaded and non-beaded cultured conch pearls. But the Queen Conch proved biologically difficult to work with. The species is highly sensitive to surgery, often rejecting implants or failing to survive the procedure. Its thick, muscular mantle is hard to access, and its slow metabolism means that pearl growth takes years, not months.

Images (2008) from Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, where researchers developed the first successful method for culturing conch pearls.

Because of high mortality rates, long cultivation times, and technical challenges, these early experiments did not lead to large-scale production. Small-scale efforts have continued in parts of the Caribbean, including a documented case of non-bead cultured pearls from a farm in Honduras. While encouraging, these attempts remain limited, and no fully viable commercial production has yet emerged.

These operations face the same core challenges: raising conch in captivity, protecting them from predators, and encouraging healthy pearl development over long timeframes. One of the biggest hurdles is color. The industry places the highest value on pearls with strong red and pink hues, followed by orange and yellow. So far, cultured pearls have shown inconsistent color and quality, further limiting the viability of commercial production.

For now, every conch pearl on the market remains natural and discovered by chance. Most are found during routine processing, though even then it’s rare. Some workers spend decades in conch factories without ever finding a single pearl.