THE COMMERCIAL SPONGES AND THE SPONGE FISHERIES. 509 
X. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS AS TO THE FLORIDA 
SPONGE FISHERY. 
All known and exploited sponge beds, in whatever part of the world, are 
showing more or less marked indications of depletion, and in some places, 
notably the Key grounds and to a less extent the Bay grounds of Florida, there 
has been under average conditions a conspicuous falling off in the product. 
By the introduction of improved methods of fishing the yield has been tem- 
porarily increased in some places, but there is no reason for believing that these 
increases can be indefinitely maintained or materially augmented. 
Such depletion as has occurred is in part due to the taking or destruction 
of small sponges, but is attributable principally to the intensity of the fishery 
rather than to preventable abuses. The demand for sponges, especially for 
those which are employed in the arts and industries, is constantly growing. 
Countries which formerly used practically no sponges develop a demand with 
the growth of manufactures, and countries which for years have used sponges 
now require many more than they did a decade or two ago. In 1880 the United 
States used about $394,000 worth of sponges and in 1900 about $987,689 worth. 
In the fiscal year 1907, with a domestic crop of $854,583, imports of $488,426, 
and exports of $247,145, the apparent consumption was $1,095,864, but of 
these a considerable quantity were in the warehouses of the dealers at the end 
of the year. The increase noted is due in part to higher prices but largely to 
greater consumption. The demand is outrunning the supply and to satisfy it 
the beds are being scoured as never before. New and more efficient methods 
are being introduced, while the fishermen using the old methods on old grounds 
are taking fewer sponges individually but still find the fishery more or less 
profitable owing to the higher prices which they are able to obtain. 
The outcome of these conditions is inevitably the ultimate depletion of 
the beds or the economic limitation of their product. The world can produce 
annually by natural processes alone only a certain more or less definite quantity 
. of sponges. It is obvious from the facts which have been set forth in preceding 
pages that many beds have reached their limits of productiveness, and that were 
it not for the higher prices of to-day they could not be fished with profit by the 
methods which proved lucrative in former years. A bed from which a fraction 
of the sponges has been removed has not the reproductive and recuperative 
possibilities which it possessed in its virgin state. Worked as intensely as they 
are to-day the sponge grounds can not improve; they are almost certain to 
retrograde, but by wise regulation some of them may be maintained in approx- 
imately their present condition of productiveness. 
The discovery of great sponge fields in places in which they are not now 
known or developed, in Australia and the Philippines, for instance, may provide 
for the future growth of the world’s demands, but that will be of no value to 
