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 ABOUTfeatured: 30 Best Snorkeling Blogs Fun Ways to enjoy the caribbeanOLDER POST:Eared Dove, Zenaida auriculata, Caribbean BirdsNEWER POST:Mangrove Crab, Sesarma Species, Land/Rock CrabJun 24, 10 Comments Off
Hi readers, here’s something fun from my dive today at Directors Bay with the World Famous Dive Bus Hut crew. These are natural faces on the side of a big Orange Elephant Ear sponge, Agelas clathrodes. I found one sponge today that had so many fun faces on it that I thought I would send you a bunch all at once, yeah I know “what a wild imaginanition”! Here’s some text from a fun site called Sea and Sky, “many sponges are extremely plant-like in appearance but are actually one of the most primitive animals in the sea. They belong to a group called porifera. Most of us are familiar with the dried colorless varieties that populate the kitchens and bathrooms of the world. But in the ocean, live sponges can be found in an infinite variety of colors and shapes. Most of them are relatively small, but some varieties can grow to over 6 feet in diameter. Sponges differ from all other marine invertebrates in that they have no true tissues or organs. Their structure is composed of simple aggregations of cells. The name porifera means pore bearer. The tissue of sponges encloses a vast network of chambers and canals that connect to the open pores on their surface. Sponges feed by drawing a current of water in through their pores, filtering out the nutrients, and then ejecting it out through an opening. Many sponges on the coral reef resemble some of the corals in shape and color, but upon closer inspection the difference is apparent. They are one of the many life forms unique to the ocean environment”. check out www.seasky.org for even more information. Did you know that a report in 1997 described use of sponges as a tool by bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Australia. A dolphin will attach a marine sponge to its rostrum, which is presumably then used to protect it when searching for food in the sandy sea bottom .The behavior, known as ”Sponging” has only been observed in this bay, and is almost exclusively shown by females. A study in 2005 concluded that mothers teach the behavior to their daughters, and that all the sponge-users are closely related, suggesting that it is a fairly recent innovation, cool huh, I love sponges!
I had another really busy day and it’s 8:00 and I still haven’t had dinner, where’s Aimee??? Went to Saint Joris with the dogs very early and cleaned trash for 2 hours then met my friends for a fun drift dive, then went shopping, then did a 3 hour bike ride and finally took the dogs back out for their evening walk and filled up all my bird feeders in the desert with water. That’s it for me today, till tomorrow, Barry
OLDER POST:Eared Dove, Zenaida auriculata, Caribbean BirdsNEWER POST:Mangrove Crab, Sesarma Species, Land/Rock CrabSITE MAP
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