Clusters of long lavender or grey tubes standing off the wall, each open at the top.
Tubes to about 1.5 m high and 7.5 cm thick, frequently in clusters of up to twenty-two from a common base. Long straight smooth-walled cylinders, each with a wide opening at the top, like a bundle of organ pipes. Lavender, purple-pink, grey or brown. The walls are noticeably thin for the tube diameter and the tubes are limp enough to bend in surge, which gives the familiar wall-diving silhouette.
The other Caribbean tube sponges are separated by shape and colour: the yellow tube sponge is shorter, stouter and yellow, and the convoluted barrel sponge has much thicker, lumpy walls. This is the longest, thinnest and smoothest of them.
It filters plankton and detritus from the water. It grows extremely slowly and never stops growing until it dies, so large stands are centuries old. No reliable depth range was found in the sources consulted; in practice it is a deeper-reef and wall species, usually reported below about 15 m.
It is present in Florida but is far more characteristic of the deeper Caribbean walls — Bonaire and Cayman — than of Florida reefs. Populations have declined from oil spills and pollution.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.
