Uploaded July 2013 | Updated September 2026, 13 minutes ago
Check out the size of these enormous sponges on the reefs off the Bahamas! Be sure to change your YouTube settings to HD, turn up screen brightness, and turn on your speakers. Giant barrel sponges, Xestospongia muta, are now the primary habitat-forming organisms on many Caribbean reefs, and they live to be hundreds of years old. This video gives the viewer a sense of the size of these huge sponges, as well as the large numbers of fishes and invertebrates that live associated with them. The Pawlik Lab has made these sponges among the best-studied in the sea -- to learn more about them, go to this site:
http://people.uncw.edu/pawlikj/xmuta.html
And check out the scientific papers at this site:
http://people.uncw.edu/pawlikj/pubs2.html
There is nice footage of a hawksbill turtle at the end of the video -- he was eating the other large sponge shown in this video, Geodia neptuni.
Check out the size of these enormous sponges on the reefs off the Bahamas! Be sure to change your YouTube settings to HD, turn up screen brightness, and turn on your speakers. Giant barrel sponges, Xestospongia muta, are now the primary habitat-forming organisms on many Caribbean reefs, and they live to be hundreds of years old. This video gives the viewer a sense of the size of these huge sponges, as well as the large numbers of fishes and invertebrates that live associated with them. The Pawlik Lab has made these sponges among the best-studied in the sea -- to learn more about them, go to this site:
http://people.uncw.edu/pawlikj/xmuta.html
And check out the scientific papers at this site:
http://people.uncw.edu/pawlikj/pubs2.html
There is nice footage of a hawksbill turtle at the end of the video -- he was eating the other large sponge shown in this video, Geodia neptuni.
