NOTES ON BISCAYNE BAY. 181 



Biscayne Bay lias been resorted to by sponge fishermen from Key 

 West for fully forty years, and it is still regarded as a very good spong- 

 ing ground. At times within a few years as many as 30 or 40 sponge 

 vessels have been observed in the bay during one day, and within four 

 montbs of the date when the visit to the bay was made some very sat- 

 isfactory fares of sponges had been taken. 



While the sponges exist in less abundance than when the fishery was 

 first begun, they seem to be holding their own remarkably well, and 

 no areas have been entirely exhausted, so far as known. The failure 

 to deplete grounds having such a limited extent has been due to the 

 extremely rapid growth of the sponges. In a single year a ground 

 from which practically every marketable sponge was taken has been 

 known to produce a good crop of fair- sized sj)onges. On the reefs 

 adjoining the bay the sponge grounds also continue to be productive, 

 and nowhere on the east coast of the State has that permanent deple- 

 tion of the beds ensued which has occurred on some parts of the Gulf 

 coast. 



The artificial culture of sponges is one of the subjects to be consid- 

 ered in the event of a construction of a station in this region. The 

 feasibilitj' of raising sponges from cuttings is well known; fully fifteen 

 years ago it was demonstrated at Key West, while in Europe success- 

 ful experiments were made in the Adriatic Sea as early as 1863.* 

 Attention may here be appropriately drawn to the very extensive and 

 painstaking experiments in this line conducted in Biscayne Bay by 

 Mr. Ralph Munroe, of Cocoanut Grove, by whom the adaptability of 

 the bay to j)ractical sponge cultivation has been clearly proved. The 

 general shoalness of the bay, its protected position, and other favor- 

 able conditions have permitted the prosecution of an elaborate series 

 of successful studies and experiments, an account of which has been 

 courteously furnished by Mr. Munroe and is appended hereto. 



Mr. Muuroe's experiments were restricted to the rearing of sponges 

 fi"om cuttings, although he is* convinced of the feasibility of artificially 

 raising sponges from the egg stage, ^be three species of commercial 

 sponges before named were experimented with, with the same general 

 results. Briefly stated, Mr. Munroe's methods consisted in preparing 

 cuttings of fresh sponges, fixing them to suitable supports, and placing 

 them in the water where their growth could be watched. He had at 

 one time several thousand sjionge cuttings in diflerent stages of growth, 

 and his work covered a sui3iciently long j)eriod and such diverse meth- 

 ods of fixation, etc., as to afford a safe basis for calculating the possi- 

 bilities of practical eff'orts in this direction. For several months after 

 the cuttings are placed in the water they remain inert, but when growth 

 once begins it is very rapid, and in 8 to 10 months after planting cut- 

 tings the size of the end of one's thumb, marketable sponges 5 inches 



* The Sponge Fishery and Trade, by Eichard Rathbun. The Fisheries and Fishery 

 Industries of the United States, sec. V, vol. 2, pp. 832-836. 



