Conch Clean Conor

          While snorkeling the Sapona, a wreck between Gun Cay and Bimini, I found 3 fat conchs and want to show the fam and friends how we cleaned them,…it was an interesting experience. First of all if you’ve never seen a live queen conch, let me describe them: aside from the shell which everyone knows, when you pick one up and turn it over you will see the fat meaty foot part first, with a pointy hook-shaped operculum, then you notice two eyes on the end of 1 inch stalks looking back at you. In between these eyes and a little south is a 1 inch proboscis, a tube shaped mouth part that the animal uses to suck up dirt and food. The animals never really seem scared when you pick them up, they don’t suck up into the shell like you‘d expect, instead they stay exposed and prefer to point their eye stalks back at who is carrying them around. I already had some reservations about taking conch because it seems wasteful to kill the animal and discard this huge amazing shell that will sit in the ocean probably for years. But seeing their eyes looking back at you conveys some kinda “tough guy” personality which also makes them difficult to just kill without thinking about it.
          Anyways, a quick flashback to eating cracked conch and I’m over my reservations about killing them, so I get on with it. I have never cleaned a conch before nor have I had any instructions, aside from the Bahamians telling me that if you kill the conch you must eat the thistle raw to pay respect to the animal and carry on its “essence”, which has the added benefit of making you “strong”. So the following picture diagram should tell the tale. The pictures start after the first conch came out, because that’s when Meghan discovered I was doing this and started taking pictures.And that’s it, now repeat two more times, including knocking the shells in the water.
Post script: after eating three thistles, and seeing the piles of shells around the docks that the Bahamians clean, I doubt they eat the thistle out of every conch.
There is some more work to do involving peeling the extra tough leather skin from around the foot with your teeth, but that hasn't been mastered yet, so i'll save that for another post
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One conch worth of meat on the board, two conchs up on deck, feeling cocky at this point

pointing to where I’m gonna poke the whole with the screwdriver, which I learned  from looking at the already harvested conch shells all over the bottom

tapping in the hole, foot bracing is imperative

shell slips, knock 2 conchs in the water

concentrate on the conch at hand



also dropped the conch I was working on in the water, so hair is now wet after swimming down and getting all three conchs back.  but conch is now pissed, so he has to pulled out with pliers



Victory!!



  That clear gelatinous tube at the bottom is the thistle (I’m pretty sure)



Pull the thistle out

squint at the thistle in the sun, mentally preparing for what's about to go down

stop delaying and get'r done

try not to make a stupid face