[1] It is native to the Caribbean Sea and was first described in 1987 by the French marine biologists Jean Vacelet and Claude Donadey.

The texture is fleshy, and the skin is strengthened by the presence of bundles of collagen fibres which give a reticulated pattern to the smooth, slightly slimy surface.

These star-shaped systems are separated by smooth areas and are regularly arranged over the surface of the sponge, which is a bright blue colour in living specimens.

From the amount of carbon filtered out of the water, theoretically the sponges should have grown rapidly, but in fact they hardly grew at all.

[3] The researchers hypothesized that the fast turnover in cells might be useful in coping with the pollutants and toxins contained in the water that the sponge inevitably encountered while filter feeding.