John,
Economic incentive does usually drive "progress".  Otherwise you need an inquisitive amateur.  Anyone willing to mark the shells of all live horse conchs that can be found in a fairly large area,  release them back to the same area and find them again next year?  After a few years of this, we would have some data.  A bit more difficult would be to mark babies or to corral them...

Allen Aigen
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-- John Timmerman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

In a message dated 9/12/2006 7:46:57 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [log in to unmask] writes:Horse conchs are quite
plentiful and are the T-Rex of the mollusks - they attack and
eat most (all?) other mollusks, including depleted species such
as S. gigas. That's how they get so big.
I don't fault wildlife for eating depleted species - we deplete wildlife - not them. They are just doing what they do naturally. There were always plenty of queen conchs before we came along.    My original premise was that if man wanted to mariculture horse conchs if they got scarce. we would figure out pretty quickly how fast they grow. Sorry about that getting lost in the discussion.  John Timmerman