In the Sponge of the Shrimp King

Sexy Sponges
Waxing Lyrical over Porifera

By W Goodwin

For me, reality and fantasy appear to merge when I descend beneath the sea. Each new perspective reveals another image, this one inspired by Dali, that one the realized dream of a true Drama Queen. One moment shapes and colors are subtle and subdued and in a heartbeat they change to suggestively shaped and exuberantly colored arabesques… It took me a long time to realize these sensual structures and hales of hues I see on any reef have a lot to do with sponges, the animals of the phylum Porifera.

I’m passionate about Poriferans. Most are shamelessly pigmented. Many take on self-announcing and self-glorifying shapes. But beyond their colors and shapes, I’m also attracted to their resilience and longevity. Actually, I have many reasons for this passion of mine:

· Sponges are the “first animal” of evolution and as such, they affect the biochemistry of all the animals that followed.

· Hyper-commensalism, the invasion of one’s self with zillions of other kinds of living things, began with sponges and extends to humanity. There’s not a creature out there among the “higher” species that is a “pure” single species (might be a few rule-proving exceptions… or there might not be), and that began with Porifera.