THE COMMERCIAL SPONGES AND THE SPONGE FISHERIES. 429 
ways by hardly more than that number of masters. The reasons for this are 
twofold. In the first place the local distinctions between the grounds are purely 
artificial, as the sponge-bearing belt is practically continuous, bearing in mind 
the irregular distribution of the bars themselves, and in the second place the 
spongers when out of sight of land do not know exactly where they are, few if 
any being navigators. They usually refer their location to their last point of 
departure and it may thus happen that of two vessels working side by side one 
will declare itself off Rock Island and the other off Pepperfish Keys, the two 
locations being over 40 miles apart, the first vessel having sailed south and the 
other west from the last landfall. 
Though the grounds as at present known to the spongers are indeterminate 
as to their boundaries, there were originally apparently natural distinctions 
between some of them. The shoal-water areas were first discovered and worked 
and there it was found that the sponge-bearing bottom was interrupted by large 
areas of smooth barren sand and grass. One of these, lying off Piney Point, 
separates the inshore parts of the Rock Island and Pepperfish grounds, and 
another and larger one, extending for 30 miles opposite Cedar Keys and the mouth 
of the Suwanee River, lies between the Pepperfish and St. Martins Reef beds. 
Each of these extends to a distance of 20 to 25 miles from shore and to a depth 
of 5 to 8 fathoms. Later discoveries developed bars outside of these “lakes” 
as they are called, so that in the deeper water the grounds are now continuous. 
The most prolific beds extend from off Cedar Keys to the waters southwest 
of Anclote, including New, St. Martins Reef, and Anclote grounds. About 1895 
the sponges on the Rock Island, Pepperfish, and New grounds were killed off 
by “poison water,’’ which extended from the vicinity of St. Marks to the beds 
off the Suwanee River. Recuperation of the beds first began to make itself 
evident about rgor. 
Rock Island region.—The region so designated takes its name from a smail 
island about 22 miles to the eastward of St. Marks light. It extends from 
about Ocklockonee shoal to the smooth sandy bottom off Piney Point, which. 
separates it in its shoaler parts from the Pepperfish Key beds. As developed 
by the hookers, it had an area of about 800 square miles, about 50 miles of 
which, forming a strip a few miles offshore, yields grass sponges in consider- 
able numbers. Inside of the 5-fathom line the Rock Island beds produce 
sheepswool sponges in great abundance, though most of them are compara- 
tively small. When first discovered, the sponges were larger; but owing to 
the intense fishery in the shoal waters they now have no opportunity to grow, 
if, indeed, their size has not become permanently impaired by the persistent 
and constant selection out of the larger ones, as appears to be the case at 
Sugar Loaf Key also. 
