What are Sea Sponges Used for?

Sea sponges are very simple animals that live on the ocean floor. They attach themselves permanently to an anchorage, and move sea water through their bodies, filtering out tiny organisms for food. The channels that the water flows through account for their hole-riddled structure, and is what makes their composition so useful. They are harvested by divers; sponge-diving has been a family tradition in many areas around the Mediterranean Sea and off the coast of Florida in the U.S. They have been used as cleaning tools for thousands of years. Manufactured cellulose sponges have decreased the market for natural sea sponges, and for common household cleaning use, they are certainly sufficient and much cheaper. Still, there are some applications where you might want to spend the extra money to get the genuine article. If you love your car, you might want a large natural sea sponge to wash it with. When wet, sea sponges are very soft, much softer than their artificial cousins, and much ...  more