Eight years after its last major mission to the Caribbean, the French SponBIODIV team, reinforced by Cristina Diaz (Maritime Museu of Margarita, Venezuela), returned to Martinique to sample sponges. Martinique is a biodiversity hotspot in the Caribbean, with 200 sponge species recorded in 2017 and around 20 new taxa described up to 2022. During this new mission held in January 2026, around 120 different species were collected, at least 50 of which are believed to be new records for this Caribbean island, and at least 10 are believed to be new species.
After providing around 80 species to the French marine genomics program (https://www.atlasea.fr/), more than 100 species from Martinique have now been introduced into the pipeline for the production of reference genomes at the chromosomal level.
Unfortunately, this good news is accompanied by bad news. This return to the site eight years after the last missions to the island also revealed a decline in the populations of many species, with recently described species of Calcarea and Homoscleromorpha appearing to have disappeared, and a higher incidence of numerous syndromes in massive sponges, which make up the bulk of the Caribbean’s seascape.
This mission was reported in the National press and also at a public conference.
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