Azure Vase Sponge

• Its iridescent blue is not a pigment but an optical effect of the structure of its surface, and it vanishes the moment the animal is taken out of the water.
• A sponge of this size filters several thousand litres of water a day, which makes it an essential purifier of the reef.
• Its body hosts enormous communities of symbiotic bacteria, which can account for a good part of its mass and from which compounds of pharmacological interest are extracted.
• Its electric blue underwater is not pigment but fluorescence: it absorbs short-wavelength light and re-emits it as blue and green, which makes it stand out in the dimness of the reef.
• It filters enormous volumes of water. A sponge this size can process thousands of litres a day, capturing bacteria and particles that no other animal on the reef makes use of.
• That role is central to the so-called sponge loop: it turns dissolved organic matter, useless to almost everything, into detritus that does feed other reef animals.
• It has no true organs or tissues. Water enters through minute pores, passes through chambers lined with flagellated cells and leaves by the opening at the top, the osculum.

Habitat and environment

Caribbean reefs and walls, from 3 to 50 m

Sources consulted: Lamarck (1814) · de Goeij et al. (2013), Science · Smithsonian Marine Station