{"id":19089,"date":"2024-01-08T09:54:17","date_gmt":"2024-01-08T04:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=19089"},"modified":"2025-04-05T15:12:37","modified_gmt":"2025-04-05T09:42:37","slug":"sponge-farming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/sponge-farming\/","title":{"rendered":"Sponge farming"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>About Sponge farming<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Sponge farming is a relatively new business opportunity that does not harm the marine environment.<\/li>\n<li>A sponge is a\u00a0living animal which is made of loosely arranged cells that surround a skeleton of fibres.<\/li>\n<li>The specialised cells nestled within thousands of tiny chambers act as microscopic pumps, and tirelessly drawing water into the sponge\u2019s body with their whip-like tails.<\/li>\n<li>Sponges\u00a0provide homes for many other animals, plants, and microorganisms. In many cases, they all work together in a mutual\u00a0symbiotic relationship.<\/li>\n<li>Sea sponges exist in all oceans around the world and make up 20% of the global silicon biological sink.<\/li>\n<li>This unique pumping mechanism, which helps sponges extract nutrition and oxygen, also purifies the ocean water by removing impurities, including sewage.<\/li>\n<li>Uniqueness: Sponges, unlike seaweed, possess remarkable\u00a0resilience to climate change,\u00a0require minimal maintenance, and command premium market prices,<\/li>\n<li>Reproduction: Most sponges are\u00a0hermaphrodites, harbouring both male and female reproductive organs, enabling them to self-propagate effortlessly.<\/li>\n<li>New sponges emerge from small buds that detach from the parent sponge and begin independent growth.<\/li>\n<li>Even damaged or fragmented sponges can regenerate into new individuals.<\/li>\n<li>This remarkable regenerative ability underpins the ease and feasibility of commercial sponge farming.<\/li>\n<li>Uses:\n<ul>\n<li>These sponges are\u00a0used for bathing and general hygiene because they are naturally antibacterial and antifungal and can resist odours.<\/li>\n<li>Research has also shown that the spongy creatures play an important role themselves in\u00a0combating climate change.<\/li>\n<li>Their skeletons break down into microscopic pieces of silicon, which helps control the carbon cycle in the ocean and reduces the greenhouse effect.<\/li>\n<li>Dissolved silicon is critical for the growth of diatoms, tiny organisms which absorb large amounts of CO2 in the ocean using photosynthesis.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1) What is a Symbiotic relationship?<\/h3>\n<p>It is the close associations formed between pairs of species. They come in a variety of forms, such as parasitism (where one species benefits and the other is harmed) and commensalism (where one species benefits and the other is neither harmed nor helped).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.downtoearth.org.in\/news\/africa\/saved-by-sponge-93521\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>Saved by sponge<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sponge farming  is a relatively new business opportunity that does not harm the marine environment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":19090,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-19089","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}