476 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
VI. SPONGE FISHERIES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN AND CONTIGUOUS 
WATERS. 
The Mediterranean produces the finest and most valuable sponges known to 
commerce, but they differ greatly in quality in different regions. Broadly 
speaking, the commercial varieties are five in number—the Turkey cup, toilet, 
zimocca, elephant ear, and honeycomb; but these are subdivided in the sponge 
trade into numerous sorts in accordance with the localities from which they come 
and the means by which they are taken, and then are still further distinguished 
by grades of quality and even by the nationality of the fishermen who take 
them. Sponges are found along the European, Asiatic, and African shores from 
Gibraltar to Port Said, but it is in certain places only that they exist in such 
numbers as to support a fishery. These regions will be taken up for considera- 
tion in more detail hereafter. 
West of Sicily and Cape Bon, in Africa, the fishery is unimportant and 
almost negligible, and the finer varieties, the toilet and cup sponges, are prac- 
tically absent. To the eastward of a line between the places mentioned the 
fishery is highly important and one of the most valuable in the Mediterranean. 
Owing to long-continued overfishing the supply from the Adriatic, the A/gean, 
and the Levant is smaller than formerly, and to meet the increased demand of 
the markets there has been in the last twenty-five to thirty years a most important 
development of the fisheries of the African Coast from Alexandria to the western 
frontier of Tunis. 
The very finest grades come from the Levant, and the quality falls toward 
the westward along both the north and south shores. In the waters contiguous 
with the Mediterranean Sea, commercial sponges are known from the Dar- 
danelles, the Sea of Marmora, the Bosphorus, and the adjacent parts of the 
Black Sea, but the quality appears to become progressively lower and the ‘quan- 
tity less in the order named. In the Red Sea there are said to be vast quanti- 
ties of sponges, but their quality is inferior and their value small. 
It is difficult to form more than an estimate of the value of the Mediter- 
ranean sponge fisheries, owing to the nomadic habits of most of the fishermen. 
The Greeks, both national and Turkish, carry on their operations not only at 
home but in almost every part of the sea which promises anything like a lucrative 
return. The Italians, while not quite so wandering, extend their operations 
across the Mediterranean to the Tunisian coast, and both they and the Greeks 
vary somewhat in their practice of marketing their catch, sometimes selling it 
in the native markets but often carrying it to their home ports, where its identity 
is lost by mixing it with the products of other localities. 
In the following pages an endeavor has been made to present such statistical 
information as is available relating to the number of men and boats engaged and 
