428 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
have gone as deep as 110 feet, have slightly extended this area, and as that method 
of sponging becomes older and the shoaler waters more exhausted it can hardly 
be doubted that other productive grounds will be found in the greater depths. 
Should the Bay grounds be found to extend generally to a depth of 15 fathoms, 
about 3,700 square miles would be added to the area of sponge bottom, while if 
they prove productive to a depth of 20 fathoms there would be added to the area 
developed by the hookers no less than 5,900 square miles, making a total of 
about 9,300 square miles of sponge-producing bottom between Johns Pass and 
St. Marks inside of the 20-fathom curve. 
It must of course be understood, as before intimated, that this area is not 
all productive. In general, the sponges are confined to the ‘‘barry bottom,” 
which rises in patches like rocky islets above the sands that cover the general 
floor of the Gulf (pl. xxv). These bars are always more or less scattered, here 
isolated, there occurring in groups or series of ridges, and in the operations of 
sponging much time is consumed in looking for them. In the deeper waters 
they are found with the lead and in the shoaler waters by searching the bottom 
with the water glass or water telescope. 
The bars, especially in the shoaler water, are sometimes moderately level 
expanses, but are generally rough and rugged, with fissures, clefts, crevices, 
miniature precipices and overhanging ledges, in all parts of which the sponges 
grow like lichens clinging to the rocks, sometimes exposed to view from above, 
often hidden in semidark recesses on the sides of upright walls or beneath pro- 
jecting ledges. They are mingled with noncommercial sponges of many species, 
with gorgonians (sea feathers, etc.), polyzoa (sea moss), and corals, and sur- 
rounded by a wealth of life—fishes, mollusca, crabs, shrimps and other crustacea 
of bizarre shapes and brilliant hues, starfish and sea-urchins of varied form, sea 
cucumbers and worms, some permanently attached to the rocks and others free 
to wander, yet finding on the bars rich feeding grounds, oases in the vast desert 
of sand lying round about. 
Compared with the total area of the sponge grounds the extent of these bars 
is small, nobody can say how small relatively, but it is from them and practically 
from them alone, that the supply of sponges must be drawn. ‘Their distribution 
is irregular in different sections of the grounds and in different depths; sometimes 
there are great areas of white sandy bottom quite devoid of rocks and again the 
bars are comparatively closely approximated over a wide range. 
The Bay grounds are broadly subdivided by the spongers into the Rock 
Island, Pepperfish, New, St. Martins Reef, Anclote, and Highland regions, each 
in itself of uncertain boundaries and more or less subdivided into indefinite sub- 
localities. The names used by the spongers are very contradictory, and the 
location of a fleet working in a given area may be described in five or six different 
