For most people, the word âspongeâ suggests little beyond mundane household objects such as mops, insulation or cosmetic applicators. It is also doubtful that visitors to Greece who purchase ânaturalâ sponges give them much thought apart, perhaps, from thinking that ânaturalâ means not synthetic, and therefore somehow âgood for the environmentâ. And the vintage photograph of a sponge diver wearing an antique scaphander helmet reminiscent of Jules Verne on the label for packaged sea sponges sold in shops all over Greece, does little to alert customers to the environmental damage and the historic human cost of the industry.
This is an accurate description of my own interest in and knowledge of sponges, until I was invited to participate in a conference hosted by SOAS, London, and held on the island of Hydra in 2018. It was at The Global Life of Sponges, that Gelina Harlaftis presented a paper on Evdokia Olympitouâs ethnography and industrial history of sponge diving and the island of Kalymnos, which Olympitou completed shortly before her untimely death in 2011. It was also at that conference that the idea arose to translate Olympitouâs remarkable book into English, so that her meticulous account of Aegean sponge fishing could be made available to a wider public.
Thus a translation project was created at the Centre of Maritime History at the Institute for Mediterranean Studies, of the Foundation of Research and Technology in Rethymnon, Crete, that provided the funds and technical support, from 2019 to 2023. The project was coordinated by Gelina Harlaftis, Joyce Goggin undertook the editing of the volume, and Michaela Stergiopoulou was hired to translate the text. In 2019, Michaela Stergiopoulou began translating Olympitouâs book into English and sending the manuscript, chapter by chapter, to Joyce Goggin to be edited. With that process completed, from 2020 to 2022 Gelina, Michaela and Joyce began meeting regularly on what they fondly called âSponge Fridaysâ, to painstakingly review the text, line by line, as they revised the edited English translation with the original Greek text in hand to compare for accuracy. The result, Aegean Sponge Fishing and the Island of Kalymnos, 19thâ20th Centuries, is a faithful translation â as faithful as possible â of Evdokia Olympitouâs highly detailed, foundational work on sponge fishing and the island of Kalymnos.
Importantly, Olympitouâs magnum opus is about the island from which her family came, and the legacy with which she was raised. From a long line of Kalymnians involved in the sponge trade such as investor Ioannis Emmanouil Olympitis, or merchant and outfitter Themelis Olympitis in the 19th-century, as well as the 20th-century warehousing sponge merchant Vouvalis Olympitis, Evi had remarkable access to both text-based archives as well as to living memories of the industry, which she recorded from interviews with members of the local population.
The publication of Eviâs book in Greek was made possible by a group of devoted friends. All of them have given their support at various stages for this bookâs production. We are most grateful for their help and encouragement. In particular, we would like to thank Katerina Dede who selected the photographs published in this book from the photographic archives of the Benaki Museum.
Olympitouâs Aegean Sponge Fishing and the Island of Kalymnos, studies the island and its inhabitants, as well as the industry and its multifarious impacts on the islandâs population and ecosystems from multiple disciplinary perspectives, such as anthropology, ethnography, industrial history, economic history, human geography and cultural studies. This is, moreover, a work of rich and remarkable detail. Yet while Evdokia Olympitou offers us an important archive in the following pages, there are still gaps to be filled, and that job must be passed on to future researchers. At the same time, while some of the detail provided here might seem superfluous, we believe that Evi also intended this book as a resource for people who will hopefully carry on her research and take it in new directions.
It is our hope that this book will be of service to readers interested in our seas and oceans and their history, and we affectionately dedicate it to the memory of Evdokia Olympitou, in thanks for her important and invaluable work.