A man was caught with 10 queen conch on his sailboat. Now, he’s doing time
A Florida Keys judge sentenced a Georgia man to two days in jail and a year of probation for harvesting 10 queen conch in 2017, which have been illegal to keep in Florida since the 1970s.
Turner Rentz, 54, pleaded no contest to 10 counts of possessing the mollusks — popular for both their meat and shell —-- and Monroe County Judge Sharon Hamilton sentenced him Wednesday at the Plantation Key courthouse.
Rentz also must pay fines and court costs, as well as serve 40 hours of community service. He is also prohibited from being on Monroe County waters for the duration of his probation.
The jail time is indicative of Monroe County State Attorney Dennis Ward’s tough stance on conservation crimes in the Keys. Ward’s office announced last summer that prosecutors have established baseline plea offers for many violations that include jail time.
His prosecutors on the Rentz case, Jorge Jaile and Paul Vargo, sought to put the Marietta man in jail for 180 days.
Retz’s attorney, Jay Hershoff, said his client never planned to keep the conch, which were on his 22-foot sailboat, alive and in whole condition when a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officer checked the vessel on July 26, 2017, on the ocean side of Indian Key Pass.
“He had his children on his boat,” Hershoff said. “Obviously, he never intended to keep them. They were all returned to the water alive.”
Hershoff said that the sentence was not ideal, but he advised his client to take the offer rather than risk the much longer sentence.
“The state wanted 180 days. Judge Hamilton didn’t see it that way and sentenced him to two days,” Hershoff said.
But Larry Kahn, spokesman for the Monroe State Attorney’s Office, said prosecutors wanted a stiff sentence because Rentz told the wildlife officer conflicting stories on why the conch were on his vessel.
According to Kahn, Rentz first said he had no plans to eat them. He told the officer he and his children sailed to Indian Key to collect shells, and he was going to remove the conch from their shells so he could display them in his home, Kahn said.
“But, he later told officers he wanted to use the conchs as a tool to educate others about the ocean,” Kahn said.
Queen conchs were once abundant in the Keys, but their populations suffered due to overfishing. The tasty mollusks can live up to 40 years. They’re still on the menu at many South Florida restaurants as conch fritters, cracked conch and conch chowder, but they are imported from other countries, inclduing the Bahamas.
This story was originally published February 7, 2020 at 1:03 PM with the headline "A man was caught with 10 queen conch on his sailboat. Now, he’s doing time."
