Emcee Ray Rowell with fishermen John Soposki and Jake Angelo.
By Doreen Leggett
John Soposki had just finished his serving of coconut curry conch when he was asked how he liked it.
“I almost ate the plate too,” he grinned.
The other 80 or so attendees at an April Meet the Fleet at the Fishermen’s Alliance had similar praise for the dish prepared by Chef Jeni Wheeler of the Family Table Collaborative.
Most hadn’t realized that conch (more accurately whelk) is available on the Cape.
Soposki did; he harvests them in Cape Cod Bay. Soposki, 20, and Jake Angelo, 34, were guest fishermen at the event which brings together chefs and fishermen to introduce local seafood, with a side of stories about how it’s caught.
Meet the Fleet is more than a decade old and Wheeler told the group she had wanted to be a part of it for years.
When she was told she would be preparing conch, she was a little hesitant but warmed to the idea. She decided she would not serve fritters or chowder, two common choices. Wheeler opted for conch ceviche and a curry conch.
“This evening is brought to you by the letter ‘C’,” she joked.
Wheeler told the crowd about her non-profit while volunteers passed cups and plates of conch, which Wheeler described as one of “the cleanest proteins.”
“They will serve while I’m talking, so I won’t stand between you and the food,” Wheeler said.
Her collaborative formed as a response to the critical need caused by COVID and continued when it became clear issues surrounding food security on Cape Cod are systemic.
The Family Table “stands at the nexus of health and education. Food is the number one thing that effects physical and mental health,” Wheeler said.
The mission is to provide healthy, prepared meals because “healthy people make healthy communities.” With 550 volunteers, the collaborative has distributed more than 250,000 meals and “rescued” more than 150,000 pounds of produce that otherwise would have been thrown away.
The collaborative’s homebase is 1338 Route 28 in Yarmouth, formerly the Riverway Lobster House, an iconic restaurant.
Culinary students at Cape Cod Tech joined Wheeler there before the Meet the Fleet to help prepare 25 pounds of fresh conch supplied by Chatham Fish and Lobster. The meat was out of the shell when it arrived, which made life easier.
There was one small mishap; homemade plantain chips supposed to sit atop the curry conch hit the pavement by mistake.
“Happens in a teaching kitchen,” Wheeler said with a laugh.
She said the kitchen was loud with syncopation that afternoon as conch meat needs a tenderizing and budding chefs used mallets with alacrity.
The conch harvest ramped up on the Cape in the 1980s when groundfish, including cod, slowed down. During the same time the conch fishery in southern waters was shut down because of overfishing, so New England’s gastropod, a different species, stepped in.
Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) made the conch fishery limited entry in 1992, meaning if you wanted to fish for conch you needed to buy an existing permit. DMF also established a 200-pot limit. Other rules and regulations have been updated, including a minimum gauge size.
Soposki had a gauge and shells to show the audience how large conch need to be for harvest. He bought his permit two years ago on the advice of his captain.
Soposki has been fishing for several years, first coming to the Cape summers during high school.
“I really liked being on the water,” he told the group.
He spends the bulk of his time lobstering and sea bassing as a crew member, then conching on his own boat. The season starts on April 15, before lobstering ramps up and sea bass starts. The ideal time to harvest conch on Cape Cod is spring and fall. During the summer, waters can get warm and conch hunker down, not moving around the ocean floor.
Conch are carnivorous, voracious predators, once subject to a bounty because they ate so many shellfish. Jake Angelo told the crowd he didn’t think conch have a natural predator.
“Nothing, I think, will go out of their way to eat them,” he said.
Fishermen have designed a trap especially for them, which can be set singly or in trawls. The trap is made of wire or wood and lined with concrete, so it stays on the bottom. The top is open and conch crawl up to get the bait, which Angelo said unequivocally need to be horseshoe crabs.
“If we did not have horseshoe crabs the fishery would be over,” he emphasized.
Angelo said horseshoe crabs are the most effective bait by far and he is concerned about efforts to ban their harvest. He explained that Massachusetts has conservatively managed the catch for close to 20 years, allowing less than half of the amount granted to the state. In the past two years DMF has expanded protections, including a no-harvest closure for approximately two months when horseshoe crabs are spawning. DMF has reported horseshoe crab numbers increasing, with 2025 one of the most robust since the 1980s.
Angelo has been fishing for conch in Nantucket Sound for several years and said he would love more conch to sell locally; the market is predominantly Asian or Italian.
Audience member Hank Spadaccia remarked that he has had “scungilli” a number of times, being Italian, but never knew it was made with conch.
“I would love to have it in a restaurant around here,” he said.