Kalymnos Sponge Diving
The small island of Kalymnos is renowned as the center of the Greek sponge diving industry, which has flourished on the island since ancient times. The history of sponge diving in Greece dates back to antiquity, having been mentioned in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, as well as in the writings of Aristotle. The philosopher Plato also refers to sponges as an article that was commonly used in bathing, mostly by wealthier citizens.
Sponge diving has been referred to as the oldest profession on the island of Kalymnos. The sponge diving industry contributed immensely to the economic and social development of the island through the years. For centuries, Kalymnos remained the center of the sponge diving industry in Greece, even though sponge diving was also an important source of revenue for several other Greek islands of the Mediterranean. Interestingly, the waters of the southeastern Mediterranean provide the best conditions for the growth of fine-quality sponges, which accounts for the thriving sponge industry on many of the region’s islands.
The first divers of Kalymnos gathered their sponges from the bottom of the sea using the skin diving technique. In other words, they dove into the sea naked, carrying a skandalopetra (flat stone weighing about 15 kilograms) to sink to the seafloor quickly. To ensure the presence of sponges on the seafloor they would often use a glass-bottomed cylindrical tool. The skilled divers would dive up to 30 meters underwater and stay there for three to five minutes at a time gathering the sponges with a special net.
Although it was a hard, dangerous, and manually intensive technique, the skin diving method brought an abundance of sponges and enormous wealth to the island of Kalymnos. During the middle of the 19th century, the merchants of the island made immense profits from the trade and export of sponges and became highly influential members of society. The already booming business of sponges got a further boost after 1865 with the introduction of the standard diving suit known as skafandro. The suit was complemented by a helmet, a copper breastplate, shoes, and weights on the chest. It enabled the previously naked divers to gather larger quantities of sponges at greater depths (up to 70 meters), staying down for longer periods than was previously possible.
The introduction of the skafandro brought profound changes to the sponge diving industry. Gone were the days of the small boats in which the divers of Kalymnos ventured out to the sea. Taking their place were large fleets of ships that mined for sponges on a large scale. According to Faith Warn, a British journalist and former resident of Kalymnos, the vast sponge diving fleet included 300 ships with 6 to 15 divers for each ship, another 70 ships that used harpoons to harvest sponges, and 70 trawlers. The ships were launched from the island to scour the Aegean and the Mediterranean, often staying at sea for as long as six months and visiting places as far away as Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia.
However, the use of the standard diving suit brought in its wake serious risk and danger to the divers who had to make several dives a day at greater depths without any decompression pauses. Such grueling conditions caused great damage to the divers’ health, many of whom got paralyzed and some of them even died of decompression sickness. Per the writings of Warn, the new diving method caused the death of around 10,000 divers between 1886 and 1910; another 20,000 divers were permanently disabled during that same period. The dangers of the new sponge diving method had a deep impact on the families and society of Kalymnos. Every household on the island could count at least one family member who had either died or been paralyzed during the sponge diving season.
The situation became so dire at the end of the 19th century that the Turkish sultan, who then ruled all Dodecanese islands, banned the use of the skafandro at the request of the suffering women of Kalymnos. However, the ban was short-lived as the profits of the sponge diving industry plunged causing serious economic concern. The skafandro returned after a few years, bringing in further deaths and disabilities due to decompression-related accidents. At the same time, commerce flourished and merchants made immense fortunes again. The common people also benefited as free healthcare and education were made available to everyone. In 1920 a new respiratory apparatus was implemented, called the fernez, that decreased the amount of serious accidents.
The two World Wars seriously disrupted the sponge diving industry of the island which almost came to an end after the Second World War. Many of the skilled sponge divers resettled in various parts of the world, such as five hundred divers from the Dodecanese who found a new home in the USA. Many divers also found opportunities in Australia's pearl industry after the Australians refused to work with Japanese pearl divers due to tensions caused by the Second World War.
The 1980s tolled the death knell for the Greek sponge diving industry when most of the sponges in the eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea were found to be infected by pollution. The sponge diving fleet was reduced to four, from the previous number of about 30. Now all that remains on Kalymnos of the once-thriving sponge industry is several workshops in Pothia, selling sponges to tourists as well as a nautical museum exhibiting items relating to the once flourishing sponge diving.
The traditional Kalymnian sponge diver's dance is inspired by the consequences of sponge diving. In fact, the dance is performed by a group of men, one of whom enacts the role of a sponge diver who suffers from the toll that diving has taken on his body but eventually gets up to dance as the music overtakes his spirit.
