Lee Stocking Island - Cracked Conch

So today the weather was perfect and we FINALLY left Lee Stocking Island. Ha-ha, April Fool's! We are going to wait one more day for wave activity to calm down and will try tomorrow (Sunday). This morning we woke up and observed a small skiff with three Bahamians about a quarter mile behind our boat. One of the guys jumped in the water and started hauling out conch left and right. This went on for about half an hour and Kevin estimated they had hauled up between 30-50 of the critters. We weren't sure if it was completely legal, since the charts say that the area around the marine research center is a no-take zone. Later in the day we called up the research center asking permission to go ashore and hike one of the hills. We were denied -- Lee Stocking is a private island and while the research center does two tours and two hiking excursions a week, they try to discourage cruisers from coming ashore at other times. (Although earlier in the week they allowed cruisers from a different boat to go ashore and do the same hike, so I guess the rules aren't always enforced). Anyway Kevin asked about taking conch and the lady said that it was okay if you were a half mile away from the island. So since we had nothing else better to do, we headed out in the dinghy to just a little ways past where the locals were this morning.

We dropped our small dinghy anchor (it looks like a grappling hook) and Kevin dove with snorkel and fins while I stayed with the boat. Within one minute he was back with a huge conch. The bottom was covered with them; he saw one about every 10 feet. We were surprised because it seems everywhere else we have been the conch beds are scoured and are littered with shells that have already been cracked, or the live ones that are left are too small to legally take. So Kevin was excited and over the next few minutes he found three more to add to the first one. The last one was feisty and used his foot to scoot himself all over the boat trying to get away. The other ones just kind of peered at me with their creepy antenna eyes. I was a little unnerved to be sitting there in the boat with them, knowing they weren't going to live much longer. When Kevin asked if he should haul in some more, I replied that we should only take as much as he could eat since I like conch fritters okay but eating a whole plateful of the stuff isn't appealing to me. He took a look at the four we had and decided two of them would get a governor's stay of execution. He put the two smaller ones back and the four of us (including Feisty, I'm afraid) headed back to the boat.

Since it was still early I thought we should have conch for lunch and so Kevin got crackin'. Literally. We had both seen it done, in fact in Grand Bahama the Conch Salad guy had the thing cracked and cleaned in about thirty seconds. And Kevin also had a book showing him how to crack and clean them in theory, but in practice it took a little longer. He started on the first one at 11:30 and it took an hour to extract, clean, and pound the meat to tenderize it. The second one went faster. Meanwhile, I have never cooked this stuff before so I just dipped it in egg and a flour/breadcrumb mixture. That was the easy part. But I was in completely foreign territory as far as telling whether or not it was under- or over-cooked. I just gave it my best guess and within a few minutes we had a whole plate of the stuff. Kevin thought it was pretty good; I took a bite and decided that while the breading was yummy the rubbery texture was too much for me. So I had PB&J instead. But I promised him that he can have it for dinner whenever he wants; he has to do all the hard work anyway and the cooking part is easy and I don't mind it. As long as he doesn't mind that I cook something else for myself.