Hi Ross

There are probably some conch farms in the Caribbean - they come and
go. I understand there's one presently in Belize.

However, they don't keep the conchs to maturity. They raise them to
about 1-2 year-olds and then put them in the water, assuming they can
better ward off predators by then. They're purely research institutions
and not companies for profit. One I visited put tags on the animals
they released and later retrieved them if they died, and I have a
couple of the tagged shells. They wouldn't be any good as specimens or
sale shells.

I understand only one in 100,000(?) conchs has a pearl - they are VERY
rare, and fade rapidly. I doubt they could be cultured because the
animals move about so much - how would you find your "plants" in four
or five months? In contrast, pearl oysters stay pretty much in one
place.

Peggy Williams