That’s right, I am a Sponge Enthusiast. I started out like everybody else, watching SpongeBob square pants as a kid, as well as The Little Mermaid, and I loved going to the beach on family vacations.
Okay…maybe it was a little bit more intense than that. My mom called me a fish, any chance I had to be in the water I would take it no matter how cold the water was. Even now as an adult, I often find myself the first of my friends to go swimming for the season.
My constant desire to be in the water led me to become a scuba diver. Every time I went diving I felt like a mermaid, like I had completely joined the underwater realm. During my summers off from university I traveled to Costa Rica for scuba instructor training. This is where I encountered my first Sponge. I was diving with my mentor Georgia King, when I spotted this coral like Sponge on the reef. At the time I had no idea what it was, I pointed to ask, and Georgia responded by pretending to pull off a piece and wash herself. I was absolutely amazed! My first Sponge!! I couldn’t believe that I had been diving with these amazing animals all summer and had no idea. Now that I knew what Sponges looked like I started spotting them everywhere. One time I encountered a Sponge that had a Jeweled Moray Eel wrapped around it. This made me wonder did the Eel with its limited sight know it was wrapped around a Sponge? Did it find comfort in the having something to hold onto while this visitor from above swam by? This experience really challenged me to think about the impact divers have on the underwater world. Had I scared the Eel?
When guiding dive groups, I would always point out Sponges and some of their extraordinary abilities. People were always amazed to find out the scale in which Sponge’s filter feed. Clients’ eyes would light up as I told them that a Sponge roughly the size of a pineapple could filter through 1’000 liters of water a day. While filtering out nutrients for themselves they are also recycling minerals and nutrients in the water, making dissolved materials accessible to fish, crabs, squid, and other ocean life. The list of amazing features goes on and on. My client’s started to see the ocean floor in a new light. This encouraged me to take my passion for Sponges to the next step.
Along with my dive mentor Georgia, I created a certified Sponge Ecology course, helping divers from all over the world learn about and study Sponges. I learned so much teaching this course and enjoyed converting casual Sponge watchers into engaged and curious Sponge Enthusiasts.