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 ABOUTfeatured: 30 Best Snorkeling Blogs Fun Ways to enjoy the caribbeanMay 24, 09 Comments Off
 encrusting-sponge Good evening guys and gals how was your Sunday?? I bit the bullet and geared up and took off on a two hour bike ride from the house to Canoa and back in what seemed like hurricane force winds! I don’t know why I rode the loop in the direction I did, if I would have done it the other way I think it would have been much more enjoyable! For those of you unaware of the joys of riding a bike into a strong head wind it’s like rowing a canoe upstream, not a real good time. Well then why do I do it?? I lost track of how many times I asked myself that today, I guess because a bunch of my friends are riding and I don’t want to be the one struggling in the back, so train we must!
After the long ride I showered and grabbed the dogs and took them to the ocean for another two hours like a good daddy, they swam and swam and swam! We left the bay at around noon, it was now even more windy and super hot it was time for some nice cool air-co!
Your photo this evening is a close-up of a section of Peach Encrusting Sponge. Yes this is a sponge, beautiful isn’t it?? Sponges are the simplest of the multicellular animals. The Individual cells display a considerable degree of independence, and form no true tissue layers or organs. Depending on a cell’s location within the sponge, they do, however, perform somewhat specialized functions. A sponge’s surface is perforated with numerous small holes called incurrent pores or ostia. Water is drawn into the sponge through these pores and pumped through the interior by the beating of whip-like extensions on the cells called flagella. As water passes thru the sponge, food and oxygen are filtered out. The water exits into the body’s interior cavity and out the animal’s one or more large excurrent openings or oscula. (Reef Creature ID, Paul Humann/Ned Deloach) This type of sponge only grows on the sides of dead coral heads and comes in all kinds of colors, next time you swim by some stop and check it out really beautiful stuff!
I can smell something yummy cooking upstairs, have to run, see you tomorrow, Barry
05-24-2009
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