Good news! This is very preliminary, but promising research!
"... Sponges filter water through their pores, removing heavy metals, organics and bacteria while recycling nutrients.
Since shipping ports suffer from high concentrations of oil and toxins, researchers thought hardy sponges might provide a natural cleaning service. A team collected members of five sponge species for introduction to the Mediterranean port Marina Palamós. They began by growing the sponges on ceramic plates in the lab, then transplanted 42 specimens onto metal grids coated in calcium carbonate which were located within the port. ...
But the chicken liver sponge, Chondrosia reniformis, had a 92% survival rate over 455 days, even reproducing asexually. The sponge also showed an ability to “creep” away from threats such as pollution and UV radiation to more hidden crevices. ..."
"... “Here we show that some sponge species have exceptional potential for use in the restoration of degraded harbor habitats,” ...
“Unlike many sponges, the chicken kidney sponge can ‘creep’ away if local conditions deteriorate – for example, when nearby organisms compete. It can also relocate from the exposed upper surface of a rock, where it is subjected to UV radiation, polluted sediments, and predators, to sheltered crevices where these stresses are greatly reduced.
It also reproduces asexually by fission: this allows populations to expand rapidly and later reproduce sexually, increasing the chances of successful fertilization.” ..."
From the abstract:
"Harbor infrastructures impose strong environmental stress on coastal marine communities, limiting the persistence of many native species and hindering ecological restoration.
Identifying resilient habitat-engineering organisms is therefore key to developing effective and affordable renaturalization strategies. In this study, we evaluated the suitability of five Mediterranean sponge species to withstand the process of collection, laboratory manipulation, and transplantation to a recreational harbor, where they were monitored over 455 days using image-based morphometric analyses coupled with computational modeling.
Among the species tested, only Chondrosia reniformis showed high resilience under harbor conditions, with 91.7% survival. In contrast, all individuals of Corticium candelabrum, Crambe crambe, Scalarispongia scalaris, and Ircinia oros died during laboratory preparation or shortly after deployment in the harbor. Individuals of C. reniformis initially underwent a moderate size reduction but subsequently stabilized their biomass.
The sponges demonstrated remarkable morphological plasticity, including continuous substrate crawling (up to 12.7 cm of total displacement) and the capacity to recover from disease.
Some individuals underwent body fission [asexual reproduction?] during warm months, generating clonal offspring that nearly doubled the size of the experimental population in the harbor.
Collectively, the results indicate that the high survival of this species in the degraded harbor environment, together with its resistance to disease, its ability to proliferate clonally, and its capacity to reposition itself for improved environmental adaption, makes C. reniformis a highly suitable candidate as putative habitat engineer in future multitrophic approaches aimed at enhancing biodiversity and renaturalizing degraded harbor environments and other anthropogenically impacted coastal habitats."
ScienceAdviser
Specimen of the chicken kidney sponge Chondrosia reniformis transplanted into the harbor
