Springs, Fla., requested the U.S. Fish and Wild- 

 life Service to make an investigation. The 

 Service contracted with the Marine Laboratory 

 of the University of Miami in 1955 to carry out 

 a scientific investigation of the commercial 

 sponges of Florida. The investigations were 

 financed with funds made available under the 

 Act of July 1, 1954 (68 Stat. 376), commonly 

 known as the Saltonstall-Kennedy Act. 



Purposes of the investigations were to learn 

 more facts about the sponges themselves, to 

 study the relationships between sponges and 

 other organisms, and between sponges and 

 their environment, to study the ways in which 

 these relationships affect sponge abundance 

 and harvest, and to make recommendations 

 leading to an increase in abundance of sponges 

 and their harvest. The principal results of the 

 investigations and a review of the status of the 

 industry are presented in this paper. 



Sponges constitute one of the principal divi- 

 sions of the animal kingdom. They live and grow 

 exclusively underwater, both fresh and salt. 



Sponges are simple multicellular animals 

 made up of several specialized types of cells. 

 Differentiation into definite tissues is incom- 

 plete; consequently, there are little coopera- 

 tion and coordination among parts of the body. 

 The several types of cells are supported by the 

 skeleton. 



Sponge skeletons are of spicules or a net- 

 work of pale brown fibers. Elasticity of the 

 fiber skeleton gives rise to the familiar term 

 "spongy." Sponges are of all sizes and shapes, 

 and the living sponges have many colors. The 

 striking characteristic, yielding the scientific 

 name Porifera, is the abundance of small in- 

 halent openings (pores) through the surface. 

 Other apertures, called oscules (oscula), are 

 exhalent; these are usually larger in size and 

 fewer in number than the pores. Water con- 

 taining both food and oxygen is taken in through 

 the pores and discharged through the oscules. 



Reproduction is by several means. Sponges 

 have a high ability to restore lost parts by 

 regeneration; a whole new sponge can grow 

 from just a small piece. All fresh-water and 

 some marine sponges reproduce asexually by 



means of gemmules; these embryos are formed 

 simply by assembly of a few amoebocyte cells. 

 Reproduction is also accomplished sexually by 

 the union of sperm and egg cells. 



THE COMMERCIAL SPONGES 



Commercial sponges are taken in the United 

 States only along the coast of Florida, from 

 depths of 1 to 150 feet. Sponges may be able 

 to live at even greater depths. The principal 

 coastal areas of distribution prior to the 

 disease of 1938 were from Carrabelle to Tampa 

 Bay in the upper Gulf; Cape Romano, Ten 

 Thousand Islands, Cape Sable, and Florida Bay 

 areas on the southwestern Florida coast; and in 

 the Keys area from the Dry Tortugas to Bis- 

 cayne Bay. 



Sponge Species 



Of the eight or nine species of marketable 

 sponges within these coastal areas, only five 

 have any commercial value at the present 

 time. These are described below in order of 

 importance together with the approximate 

 yearly percentage of total take and value based 

 on the 1955 and 1956 landings. A number of 

 these sponges are also shown in figure 1 and 

 listed in table 1. 



Four commercial sponges have been de- 

 scribed and assigned specific names for the 

 first time by de Laubenfels and Storr in 1958. 

 This new naming appears to clarify the rela- 

 tionships of the Florida commercial sponges. 



Wool sponge (Hippiospongia lachne de Lau- 

 benfels 1936) . — The wool sponge is rounded, 

 with a diameter to height ratio of from 2 : 1 to 

 1:1. When alive the sponge is black, the color 

 changing to a light gray at the base. Wool 

 sponges that grow in shallow water are much 

 darker than those found in deeper water. The 

 surface of this sponge is usually covered with 

 blunt points, and the sides of the sponge have a 

 number of small inhalent openings, the oscules 

 (the large openings on the top), varying from 

 1/2 to 1-1/4 inches in diameter. Commonly the 

 oscules are surmounted by thin-walled chim- 

 neys up to 2 inches in height, and are normally 

 larger in shallow-water sponges. The average 

 size (used throughout this paper as measure- 

 ment of the diameter) of this sponge being taken 



