"The Sponge Divers of Kalymnos" article published in The Athenian 1974
by Willard Manus, published in The Athenian, August 30, 1974 - pages 19-21
"The young girls of Kalymnos sang their song of farewell, the wives and mothers wept as the diving boats left the harbor in slow formation, flags flapping in the breeze, newly-painted gunwales gleaming in the hard-white Aegean sunlight.
And the whole of the ancient harbor resounded with the peal of church bells, and with shouts and cries and sobs:
‘Goodbye… goodbye!’ ‘Kalo taxithi… good journey!’ ‘Farewell, children… farewell!’ It was six days after Easter. A dozen tiny boats were putting out to sea, bound for the sponge beds of Greece and North Africa. Each boat carried from eight to twenty men — the famed sphoungarades (sponge divers) of Kalymnos. They would stay away for seven long months, risking death or paralysis to tear sponges from the bottom of the sea.
Kalymnians have dived for sponges for as long as man can remember, but today that tradition is for the first time in danger of being broken. After all the Kalymnians have endured — disaster and pain beneath the sea, starvation and oppression above it — it is ironic that their way of life should be threatened by a well-meaning scientist who discovered how to spin a synthetic sponge. That his sponges are not much good doesn’t matter: they are cheap to produce; housewives buy them....."
READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE:
https://www.the-athenian.com/site/1974/08/30/the-sponge-divers-of-kalymnos/
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