The Sponges of Micronesia, Part I. The Palau Archipelago

Abstract

Although potentially interesting from a zoogeographic standpoint, the marine fauna of the Palau Islands and of the islands and atolls to the eastward , with the except ion of Hawaii, have received scant attention from expeditions and individual collectors. It was to repair this gap in our knowledge that the "Project Coral Fish" expeditions to the western and central Pacific were undertaken. The first of these expeditions visited the Palau Islands in 1955 and made extensive marine collections , of which the sponges described below were a part.