Go Sessile

Imposed lack of travel mobility during the most intense months of the Covid period reminded me of that most immobile of creatures – the sea sponge. Sponges are sessile and the general confinement and people’s reaction to it persuaded me to self-identify as a sea sponge. To paraphrase Ezra Pound:

I stood still and was a sponge [tree] amid the waters [wood],
Knowing the truth of things unseen before.

I noticed that studying the phenomenon of sessile animal life brought comfort. Here are some examples.

The Bullion Spike
The Bullion Spike is a star aster type sponge with four tubular rays from a central foundation. The conical rays are pale indigo crusted with spicules tinctured with gold. These golden apertures admit light into the organism. These sponges indicate that gold is present on the ocean floor. At one gramme for every hundred million metric tons of ocean sand and this sponge growing to five centimetres maximum, the gold is a pigment only and not even a smudge. Auromaniacs do, however, lust after this creature and its locations are kept secret.

Ghost Sponge
Ghost Sponge remembers every breath. While I breathe six hundred and fifty million times between birth and death the Ghost Sponge recalls every single one of them. Not only mine but yours too. And the breath of mice. The breaths of every living thing on earth flow through the memory of Ghost Sponge.

Deep Pain
The deep pain sponge is one of the most universally distributed of all sponges found both in fresh and sea water locations. It is in plain sight yet many divers report that it is hard to see. Soft and pliable in itself, deep pain grows attached to a rock-like twin which when a sample is taken breaks off and falls into a carpet of other sponges, most notably the confabulatory limb variety where it is even more difficult to find.

Labios mágicos
Even though it is predominantly cream (with some green) this sponge is so named because of the Mexican, squid-abundant waters where it flourishes. The black/white contrast and the folded shapes reminded observer-zoologists of the swollen genitalia of some mammals, notably the hussar monkey. Even though appearing to be soft the floral forms are actually inflexible. The interior is where the action is. Flagellants are constantly filtering water and all the movement takes place inside.

Aquascape
This unusually named fish and chip shop, located on Union Street, Plymouth, England, is included because the owners, Brian and Mary Hatcher, are prize winning aquarists. They took first prize in the 2019, UK Aquascaping Competition, category: Aqua Environment. When interviewed they said that while they enjoyed living above the shop nothing would make them happier than to somehow live at the bottom of the sea. Their shop is named after the plant Ceropegia ampliata or Bushman’s Pipe (and not the prophylactic).