Commercial fishing vessels working Alaska’s Gulf of Alaska have hauled up at least 8.8 million pounds of sponges as bycatch over the past two decades — from a seafloor that federal scientists have only now begun to formally describe. Nine of the species living on that bottom had never been scientifically named until this summer, including one so structurally distinct from every known organism in its family that researchers had to invent an entirely new genus to classify it. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, meeting this week in Anchorage to weigh new habitat protections for those same waters, began its sessions on Thursday with the question of what to protect still only partially answered by science.

The two peer-reviewed papers, published this summer in the journal Zootaxa, push the total count of known Alaskan sponge species to 232 — up from 223 before the study — while Sean Rooney, the NOAA Fisheries biologist who led the work, estimates that hundreds more remain undescribed in waters that have barely been sampled. Rooney and his co-authors classified nine new species taken from trawl surveys as far back as 1997.

Trawl Net as Collecting Jar: How the Science Got Done

The specimens did not come from dedicated research dives. Rooney gathered sponge samples as a side mission during NOAA’s routine Groundfish Assessment Program bottom-trawl surveys, which the agency has conducted annually to track commercial fish and shellfish populations. Trawl nets designed to scoop up cod and flatfish also pull up everything else living on the bottom, and for 25 years, Rooney set aside those incidental catches for later examination.

“Back in the old days when they only looked at spicules, they were able to say, ‘Oh, we think the relationships are this to this,'” Rooney told Alaska Public Media. “But now, with genetics, you can get a much better resolution.”

That combination of old and new methods — measuring spicules under a microscope and running DNA sequences — defines modern integrative sponge taxonomy. Spicules are the silica-based or calcium-carbonate structural elements that form a sponge’s skeleton, analogous in function to a building’s rebar. Unlike fish or crabs, sponges offer no obvious visible features — no fins, no eyes, no appendages — to distinguish one species from another aboard a survey vessel. Identifying a sponge to species requires a lab, a microscope, and often months of comparative work.

For each sample in the study, researchers measured 20 spicules of each type, recording the minimum, average, and maximum dimensions, then compared those measurements against all known genera in the family. The gap between collection and publication — in some cases more than two decades — is not negligence. It reflects how difficult the work is. As ecoticias.com documented, specimens proved distinctive enough that several required years of comparative laboratory analysis before formal description became possible.

How Does Sponge Taxonomy Actually Work?

Sponge taxonomy combines two methods neither of which can be done on deck. Spicule morphometry maps the shape, size, and arrangement of a sponge’s microscopic skeletal elements. Different types — acanthoxeas (needle-shaped and barbed), chelae (anchor-shaped), tylostyles (pin-shaped) — appear in different arrangements across the sponge tissue, and the combinations are species-specific enough to distinguish even closely related organisms.

DNA barcoding adds the second layer, sequencing mitochondrial genes (typically the cytochrome oxidase subunit I gene, or COI) that act as biological fingerprints. The sequences are deposited in GenBank, NOAA’s public marine genetic library, where they also equip future eDNA surveys — environmental water samples filtered for genetic traces — to detect whether a species is present without physically collecting it. Neither tool works in real time from the deck of a trawl vessel. The federal fisheries observers stationed aboard those vessels can record “sponge caught” as bycatch, but they cannot identify the species without subsequent laboratory analysis.

This creates the structural problem at the heart of the Gulf of Alaska trawl debate: the regulatory system has been authorizing harvest in waters it cannot fully inventory. The Essential Fish Habitat review that NOAA Fisheries completed in 2023 — the one that concluded bottom trawling had only “minimal and temporary” effects on Gulf of Alaska habitat, the finding that Oceana successfully challenged in court through August 2026 — was conducted with knowledge of only 223 known Alaskan sponge species, not 232, and with mathematical certainty that additional species remained undescribed. The Ninth Circuit ultimately dismissed Oceana’s lawsuit for lack of jurisdiction, determining the injury claims required too many speculative assumptions.

What Polycapus rubrum Tells Taxonomists

The most striking find among the nine is a vivid red sponge retrieved from the Gulf of Alaska and now formally named Polycapus rubrum. Its skeleton contains a combination of spicule types — specifically acanthoxeas and chelae — arranged in multiple layered caps that do not appear in any other known genus within its family, Hymedesmiidae. Because no existing genus could contain it, researchers created one: Polycapus, from the Latin for “many caps,” for the layered silica architecture; rubrum for red. Alaska Public Media confirmed that Polycapus rubrum‘s combination of acanthoxeas and chelae is found in no other genus in the family Hymedesmiidae.

Assigning a new genus is not a minor taxonomic event. Genera sit one rank above species in the Linnaean hierarchy; a new genus implies a lineage sufficiently diverged from all known relatives that no existing category fits. The silica structures in Polycapus rubrum‘s multi-layered cap accumulate into a material that behaves similarly to fiberglass — stiff, reinforced by interlocking needle-like elements — providing a structural framework that apparently evolved independently of all its family relatives.

Tropical Relative Found Far From Home

A second notable find is Julavis borealis, a species belonging to a group previously known only from tropical seas. Borealis — Latin for “northern” — signals the scientific surprise: this lineage was not expected in cold Alaskan waters. Whether J. borealis represents a natural range extension, a response to shifting ocean temperatures, or simply an organism that had always been present but undetected, remains an open research question.

Five of the nine species were found in the Aleutian Islands. The others turned up in the Gulf of Alaska or in both regions. All nine came from the mesopelagic and upper bathyal zones — between 50 meters (164 feet) and 500 meters (1,640 feet) below the surface — the perpetually dark, thermally stable, wave-sheltered zone where slow-growing sponge communities can persist for centuries.

Why Sponge Communities Matter to Commercial Fish

Sponges occupy a disproportionate ecological role for organisms that look so simple. They filter enormous volumes of seawater, cycling organic matter and nutrients through the water column — some species can filter a volume of water equal to their own body mass in seconds. But in Alaska’s commercial fishery context, the critical function is structural.

“Sponges are basically the structural backbone of the seafloor,” Rooney told Alaska Public Media. “Think of them as underwater forests.”

Northern rockfish, a commercially important species, feed in open water during the day and return to sponge fields for nighttime cover. Golden king crabs shelter in sponge habitat. Young red king crabs, during vulnerable juvenile stages, use sponge communities in Bristol Bay. Fish deposit eggs inside sponge structures. The three-dimensional architecture that large sponges create — some of them centuries old, reaching heights of several feet — functions as the scaffolding on which commercially valuable fish populations are organized. NOAA itself notes that rockfish return to sponge fields for nighttime cover, highlighting the structural role these organisms play.

“They’re the backbone of a healthy ocean,” said Cooper Freeman, Alaska director of the Center for Biological Diversity. “They provide essential habitat for fish as nurseries and protective grounds from predators. If we want fish to continue to be abundant, they need habitat, and sponges provide that habitat.”

Sponges also contain bioactive chemical compounds that pharmaceutical researchers have investigated for potential applications in cancer treatment and antibacterial medicine, adding a second dimension to the case for documenting them before they’re removed. The University of Delaware found that an Alaskan sponge showed promise in cancer research roughly a decade ago, and newly described species may harbor similar properties.

Alaska’s Ocean: Still Mostly Unmapped

The discoveries reflect a fundamental limitation of what science knows about Alaskan waters. Approximately 61% of Alaska’s ocean bottom has never been mapped using modern high-resolution sonar, according to Rooney — a figure that compares unfavorably even with the national average of roughly 56% of federal waters unmapped. Extreme weather, seasonal sea ice, and the sheer geographic scale of Alaskan waters make the survey problem more acute than anywhere else in the U.S.

Even where sonar mapping exists, it reveals only depth contours. It does not identify the organisms living on the bottom. That requires physical samples, followed by the slow, exacting laboratory work that produced the nine new species.

“You can’t protect or manage something you haven’t named or identified,” Rooney told Alaska Public Media. “By naming and identifying these species, it really provides essential spatial data to map these fragile seafloor habitats.”

NOAA Fisheries has maintained a formal Alaska Deep-Sea Coral and Sponge Initiative since the early 2000s — a program established precisely because the region’s coral and sponge communities were only then being recognized as globally significant. The agency’s deep-sea sponge program in Alaska has continued building the baseline species catalog that makes meaningful habitat protection possible.

Why Is Bottom Trawling Controversial in Alaska?

Bottom trawling drags weighted nets across the seafloor to harvest groundfish — cod, pollock, flatfish — that form the backbone of Alaska’s commercial catch. The practice is legal, heavily regulated, and economically fundamental to Alaska’s largest industry. It is also structurally destructive to the three-dimensional sponge and coral habitats that live on the bottom, because those nets contact and remove whatever is in their path.

The regulatory landscape is sharply divided. Most of the Aleutian Islands region has been off-limits to bottom trawling since 2006, when the North Pacific Fishery Management Council acted to protect the coral and sponge gardens documented there. That closure covers roughly 280,000 square nautical miles — an area comparable in size to Texas and Colorado combined — and was a landmark in federal habitat protection.

The Gulf of Alaska, however, is a different matter. The Gulf stretches from Yakutat in the southeast to the Islands of the Four Mountains near the central Aleutian chain, and the vast majority of it remains open to bottom trawling. Environmental groups describe it as the largest area of U.S. waters between San Diego and the Arctic without Aleutian-style protections — as Alaska Beacon reported in its coverage of the failed Oceana lawsuit.

Bycatch statistics for 2005 through 2025 show that the Alaskan bottom-trawl fleet reported hauling up approximately 8.8 million pounds of sponges and 1.1 million pounds of corals as incidental catch. The pelagic trawl fleet — which is supposed to remain in the water column rather than contact the seafloor — reported considerably smaller but non-zero volumes: approximately 9,400 pounds of sponges and 82,600 pounds of corals over the same period, a figure that suggests some vessels are making unintended contact with the bottom.

A Lawsuit Lost, a New Proposal Filed

The conservation organization Oceana has fought for years to extend Aleutian-style protections to the Gulf. At the June 2023 NPFMC meeting, it submitted a science-based proposal that would close approximately 90% of the Gulf of Alaska to bottom trawling — while displacing, Oceana estimated, no more than 7% of recent trawl fishing areas by limiting new closures largely to areas where trawling does not already occur.

Oceana also pursued the issue in federal court. In August 2024, the group sued NOAA Fisheries in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, arguing that the agency’s 2023 Essential Fish Habitat 5-year Review — which found only “minimal and temporary” impacts from commercial trawling — violated the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. The district court dismissed the case in October 2025. Oceana appealed, but in August 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated the earlier ruling and remanded with instructions to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction, determining that the injury claims in the lawsuit required too many speculative assumptions.

The At-Sea Processors Association, which intervened to defend the industry in the lawsuit, argued after the Ninth Circuit ruling that the result vindicated science-based fishery management. “The North Pacific Fishery Management Council and NOAA are global leaders in science-based conservation of essential fish habitat,” CEO Matt Tinning said in a statement. Scientists estimate that over 96% of U.S. North Pacific benthic habitat is undisturbed by fishing activity, he said.

Oceana has continued its regulatory push. With the courts having declined to intervene, the group submitted an updated habitat protection proposal directly to the current NPFMC meeting — the one now underway this week in Anchorage, which runs through October 13.

Science and Regulation Run on Different Clocks

Meanwhile, climate change is adding a layer of uncertainty that existing data may not capture. Lauren Hynes, Oceana’s North Pacific campaign manager and a marine scientist, argues that even if trawling gear is not currently reaching sponges and corals in parts of the Gulf, the future is not static.

“As we’re starting to get all of these warming events, especially in the Gulf of Alaska, especially in recent years, we’re seeing fish species shipped into areas that they’ve never been found in before,” Hynes said. “As fish ranges shift, so does commercial fishing effort — potentially into parts of the seafloor that science hasn’t yet documented.”

The NPFMC is also grappling with the narrower problem of midwater trawling gear making unintended contact with the seafloor. At its June 2026 meeting, the council declined to take immediate regulatory action but directed staff to develop a range of options for establishing a pelagic trawl gear performance standard — essentially a measurable definition of when fishing gear is not supposed to touch bottom. The council directed staff to develop those options with findings expected in May 2027.

The Joint Protocol Committee — a joint body convened at the request of the Alaska Board of Fisheries specifically to share information about bottom-contact impacts — is scheduled to meet on October 16 to hear technical presentations on the science, the current management requirements, and the measures currently under consideration.

A Species List That Changes What “Protection” Means

For Rooney, the science carries its own policy implication even without stating it.

“You can’t protect or manage something you haven’t named or identified,” he said.

What his 2026 research produced — nine species descriptions, a new genus, and DNA sequences in the public GenBank database — is infrastructure. Each formal species description makes future eDNA monitoring possible: water samples can now be tested for the genetic signature of Polycapus rubrum, or Julavis borealis, to detect whether those organisms are present in a given area without physically collecting them. Each published description transforms a quantity of biomass — “sponge bycatch” — into something specific enough to regulate.

The 8.8 million pounds of sponges reported as bycatch over the past 20 years represents organisms removed from the seafloor at a pace several orders of magnitude faster than taxonomy has been able to describe them. Whether the council now meeting in Anchorage will act on the gap between what science knows and what the regulatory framework currently protects is a question nine newly named species, fixed in jars and sequenced in a database, cannot resolve on their own.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does it mean for a species to belong to a new genus?

A genus sits one rank above species in biological taxonomy. When researchers say Polycapus rubrum required an entirely new genus, they mean it diverges from every known organism in its family so fundamentally — in its spicule types, their arrangements, and the layered skeletal architecture they create — that none of the existing genus-level categories could contain it. Identifying a new genus is substantially rarer than identifying a new species. It implies a lineage that evolved independently enough to represent a new branch rather than a new twig on an existing one.

How is it possible that bottom trawlers have been fishing an area where species are still being named?

Sponge taxonomy cannot be done from the deck of a fishing vessel. Vessel-based fisheries observers can record that sponges were caught as bycatch, but distinguishing one species from another requires microscopic examination of spicules and DNA sequencing — both of which happen in a laboratory, often over months or years. The regulatory system has always known that something called “sponge” was being caught; it has only recently begun to know specifically what. The NOAA Essential Fish Habitat review that concluded bottom trawling had minimal impact on Gulf of Alaska habitat was conducted before nine of the species living there had been formally described.

What could the North Pacific Fishery Management Council actually do to protect Gulf of Alaska sponge habitat?

Oceana’s current proposal before the council would close approximately 90% of the central and western Gulf of Alaska to bottom trawling — while displacing, the group estimates, no more than 7% of recent trawl fishing area by focusing new closures on pristine, untrawled zones and documented coral and sponge gardens. The council could also choose to strengthen rules governing midwater trawl gear that makes unintended bottom contact; staff is currently developing options for a performance standard on that issue, with findings expected in May 2027. The council could also take no new action, as it did on the pelagic trawl contact issue at its June 2026 session.

Could the newly discovered sponge species have pharmaceutical value?

Possibly. Sponges have long attracted pharmaceutical interest because they produce bioactive chemical compounds as part of their natural defense systems. An Alaskan sponge discovered roughly a decade ago showed promise in laboratory research as a tool against pancreatic cancer. Whether any of the nine new species contain similarly useful compounds is unknown — pharmaceutical screening of newly described species typically takes years and requires substantial specimen quantities.