Notes: This is the "loggerhead sponge". Also known as Spheciospongia othella de Laubenfels, 1950. Black, leathery skin, and dark gray interior. Young reef individuals are encrusting and excavating, with a few scattered large and deep oscules, often like low volcanoes. Larger specimens are globular with one or two large atria. Surface with scattered fields of holes, often colonized by whitish zoanthids. Young specimens inhabiting sand and rubble appear as scattered elevated lobular papillae with many perforations, protruding from the substratum. Large specimens are giant barrels or globules, with 1-2 thick-lipped large atria, and the surface with the same perforated papillae. There exists S. vesparium forma pallida Vicente, Rützler & Carballeira, 1991 described from Puerto Rico but not yet found by us in the Bahamas or other locations.

Author Reference: (Lamarck, 1815)

Link: World Porifera Database