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THE RUGGED AND RISKY LIFESTYLE OF THE SPONGE DIVERS OF KALYMNOS
By Willard Manus
The young girls of Kalymnos sing their song of farewell, the wives and mothers weep as the diving boats slowly exit the harbor, flags flapping in the breeze, newly painted gunwales gleaming in the bright Aegean sunlight. The whole of this ancient harbor resounds with the peal of church bells, a musical background to the shouts, cries and sobs, "Goodby (goodbye). Kalo taxidi (good journey)!"
It is six days after Easter. Fifteen caiques are putting out to sea, bound for the far corners of the Aegean. Each boat carries from 12 to 20 men--the famed sphoungarades (sponge divers) of Kalymnos. They will stay away for seven months, risking death or paralysis to tear sponges from the bottom of the sea.
Kalymnos, a Greek island 10 miles long and five miles wide, has always been synonymous with sponges. They are what the island used to live on before the twin onslaughts of synthetic sponges and mass tourism changed their routines dramatically. The former reduced the worldwide demand for natural sponges; the latter made it unnecessary for most of the islanders to risk the perils of the sea to make their living.
Notwithstanding that, a few hardy captains and crew still follow the traditional Kalymnian way. Diving for sponges is in their blood. In addition, there is a demand for natural sponges. Certain industrial processes require them, and many people believe that no synthetic sponge can come close to matching the strength and resilience of the real thing.
There are three kinds of sponge divers. The skafendros dive wearing a full suit and helmet; fernezes have the helmet but no suit; and barcas dive exactly as their ancestors did 3,000 years ago, holding their breath and wearing neither dive suit nor helmet. Today most divers are skafendros. The biggest fear of these "hard hat" divers is that their air hose might break. If it should, and if the diver fails to utilize his helmet's safety valve in time, the suction of the pipe will strip away his flesh.
What is more commonplace is nitrogen poisoning, or the "bends." If a diver is stricken with it--usually because he has stayed down too long and ascended too rapidly--he can be paralyzed for life. Of the 14,000 inhabitants of Kalymnos, about 1,500 are victims of the bends.
In previous years, the sponge fleet traveled as far as Libya and Malta to fish for sponges. Today the divers are restricted to Greek waters.They leave their beautiful village with its cube-shaped, quilt-colored houses dug precariously into the bare flanks of the hills ringing the harbor, headed for Rhodes and Crete, Santorini and Tilos. For seven months, their days will be the same. Up at 5.30 AM. Two hours later the first diver will go over the side. Each diver makes three or four dives a day, staying down from 20 minutes to an hour each time.
After ascending, the diver empties his bag of sponges on the deck. The coral-encrusted black blobs are then trampled with bare feet and rinsed in seawater. They are then pierced with a thick steel needle, threaded on a length of rope and tossed over the side to be washed further by the sea; they are scrubbed and trimmed, and ultimately put in sacks to be brought back to Kalymnos.
And so their days pass, filled with monotony, exhaustion, frayed tempers and loneliness, a routine sponge divers have endured since ancient times. "No ordeal is more terrifying than that of the sponge diver and no labor more arduous for men," wrote Oppian 18 centuries ago. It is no different today.
Willard Manus is an active freelance writer living in Beverly Hills, CA. mavis@mainnet.com
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