Limnos Sponge Company is a family owned and operated business since 1992. We are located in the center of the sponge industry for the United States in beautiful Tarpon Springs, FL.
We welcome the opportunity to teach you about sponges and the process to transition them from “raw sponges” into the sponges you may have already seen in your local stores. You will learn about the different types kinds of sponges and their many uses.
What is a sponge, and, for that matter, is it an animal or a plant?
The short answer to the latter question is that sponges are animals, although it took the development of the microscope to finally resolve the issue. Typically, plants derive their nourishment from the soil elements, water and air, while animals feed on living things, or the organic matter derived from them. Sponges feed by filtering living and dead organic matter from the water.
A sponge is basically a bunch of cells loosely connected together. Unlike most other animals, sponge cells do not aggregate into tissues, or groups of specialized cells which can then form such things as organs. This means sponges do not have such luxuries as nerves or muscles, blood or even a mouth or a digestive cavity.
Instead, a sponge is a mass of ‘flesh’ perforated by hundreds or thousands of canals and chambers, linked to the outside by pores. These canals are lined with specialized cells each of which has a hair or whip-like end. The beating of these hairs flushes water through the sponge, bringing with it microscopic food particles and oxygen for respiration.
