**Acknowledgements**

This study was financed by Public Sectorial Research Fund for Education of México, Basic Science project Conacyt No. 258282 and R&D project Proinnova Conacyt No. 241777, under the academic responsibility of JMMS. Authors are grateful to Centro de Investigaciones Pesqueras (CIP, Cuba), Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas del Noroeste, S.C. (CIBNOR, México), Antonio Grovas Hernández of Grupo Empresarial de la Industria Alimentaria (GEIA, Cuba) who provided updated sponge extraction data, and Diana Fisher for English edition.
