John F. Storr
Published: 2015-06-25
Total Pages: 88
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Excerpt from Ecology of the Gulf of Mexico Commercial Spongers and Its Relation to the Fishery Although the first record of sponge taking in Florida dates from 1822, it was not until 27 years later (1849) that domestic sponges became a commercially valuable product in the United States. By the time diving gear was in use for sponging in 1905, concern was already being expressed about conversation of this valuable resource. This concern resulted in 4 years of extensive research (Moore, 1910a, 1910b) on sponge cultivation methods. His reports also included descriptions of sponging methods, the sponge grounds, and the commercial species of sponges. No other major investigation of the Florida sponges was undertaken until the outbreak of the sponge disease in 1938. The results of this investigation was reported by Galtsoff (1942) and Smith(1941). In 1947 and 1948, the State of Florida Board of Conversation authorized the University of Miami Marine Laboratory to make limited surveys of the Florida sponge grounds between Key West and Carrabelle. This resulted in the published accounts of the economic history of the industry (Smith, 1949; Storr, 1956), a report of the expeditions (Dawson and Smith, 1953), and a description of the commercial and noncommercial sponges collected (de Laubenfels, 1953). Meanwhile, by 1951, production had fallen to less than 3 percent of the 1936 peak and the dollar returns 1946 value when more than $3 million worth of sponges were sold. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.