Alexander Key
Treasure on the Ocean Floor
    Down on the gulf, Greek fishermen dive twenty fathoms to get the sponges that have increased in value tenfold in the past three years

    You may have heard that the sponge is an animal, and that it is his skeleton you use to wash your face. But it is not so well known that he is also an individual. The Army only recently became aware of it when it sent a buyer to the greatest sponge dealer in the world. The Army was most specific in its demands: the sponges must be all of a size and price, and exactly alike.
    There was a twinkle in the eyes of Nicholas Arfaras as he told it to me over Greek coffee in Tarpon Springs. For thirty years Mr. Arfaras has been explaining patiently to incredulous buyers that sponges are not like cabbages. You do not produce them to specification by the carload. A sponge is a wild thing, a creature of the reefs and blue depths, growing where and how he pleases on hidden rock and coral fingers. No two are quite alike, or of the same texture and weight and worth. At no time, furthermore, has the supply ever been equal to the demand. Today sponges are scarcer and the demand for them is greater than ever before in history.
    Behind all this lies a curious chain of circumstances that has made Tarpon Springs, on Florida’s Gulf Coast, the sponge port of the earth.
    Since the day of Homer, men have looked to the Greek divers of the Mediterranean for a sea offering whose peculiar properties have defied imitation. Not until a hundred years ago was it discovered that a fine New World sponge, the sheep’s-wool, grew on the reefs of Florida and the Bahamas. Gradually Nassau and Key West became the centers of the industry, and in time Cuba and the Philippines added a share to the market, as did some of the Caribbean countries.
    Before 1900, Tarpon Springs was only an occasional port of call for the sponge boats of Key West and Apalachicola. At that time all sponge fishing in our waters was done by “hooking” – a fascinating business in which you work from a dinghy, wielding a long pole with a three-tined hook while you peer, mesmerized, through a glass-bottomed bucket at the tropical sea gardens a few fathoms below. Diving, strangely, was a criminal offense in Florida, and even to be caught with diving equipment on a boat near the sponge grounds made one liable to a fine of $9000. This because of the early belief that diving was harmful to the sponge beds – the casus belli of a forty-year-old war that is still raging between the Key West hookers and the divers of the upper coast.
    After the turn of the century, the diving law was modified when new sponge bottoms and exceptionally fine wool sponges were found at depths beyond those which the hook fishermen could reach. There were no American divers who knew anything about sponging, but in Tarpon, as the town is called locally, was John Cocoris, a Greek immigrant. Through him an invitation was sent to his native islands, and in 1905 the world’s best divers began flocking to the gulf, bringing boats and diving equipment, and skills and traditions that are thousands of years old. Today Tarpon has all the color and charm of a Mediterranean port; more than half of its population of 4200 are of island-Greek ancestry, and the majority of these are directly interested in the sponge industry. They build their own vessels of Florida cypress, build them to a design proved by centuries and with a skill unequaled by any other people. Gaily painted, high of bow, they ride the gulf like the crescent moons of the Iliad. And the deep-water sponges those first vessels brought to port soon put Tarpon Springs on the map.
    And now fate takes a hand. In 1939 calamity in the form of a sponge blight almost completely wiped out all the known sponge beds in this hemisphere except those in the gulf area from Tampa to Apalachicola. Nassau and Key West faded from the picture. Soon the great war closed the Mediterranean grounds, and finally the inferior grounds of the Philippines. Today sponge-hungry factories are paying fantastic sums for sponges -sponges of any kind – paying nearly ten times as much as the highest price ever paid in the past. And nearly all those they buy are landed at the little dock in front of the sponge exchange at Tarpon.
    Tradition is strong where men have a great sea heritage. The Tarpon fleet makes four trips a year, though actually a boat may return to port a dozen times for supplies and to lock a week’s catch in its special stall at the exchange. But a trip begins only after Father Theopheles Karaphillis of the Greek Orthodox Church has blessed the fleet, and it ends when the sponges are sold at the unique quarterly auctions held in the exchange compound.
    This blessing is an impressive ceremony, and no sponger would think of putting to sea without it. Father Theopheles, a tall and striking figure in his Byzantine robes, boards each vessel in turn, bearing aloft a golden crucifix which he places upright in a basin of water on the cabin. After a lengthy service a little of the water is sprinkled upon captain and crew, and upon every part of the ship from masts, gear and diving equipment to bunks and motor below. The final act of casting off is performed only by the captain himself; before ever touching the line he makes the sign of the cross and mumbles a prayer with eyes turned heavenward.
    Aboard a diving boat the captain is king, but the head diver is prince, and a seasoned twenty-fathom man is looked upon with reverence. Once the vessel is past the eleven-mile limit – the inshore waters being reserved for hooker craft – the diver goes forward, carefully scanning the brilliant blue-green and purple of the gulf. In calm weather the water is almost gin clear, and an experienced diver can tell by the subtle changes of the bottom colors if he is over good sponging ground. A nod from him, and the vessel is heaved to, a sounding made, the mizzen sheet flattened, and the captain and the life-line man help the diver into his heavy suit.
    In the meantime, every inch of the precious air hose has been examined, the air pump and every valve and connection tested. The hose lies coiled and ready on the starboard deck, taboo to anyone but the hose tender. As the great bronze helmet is clamped over the diver’s head the air pump, usually run by the auxiliary motor, swells the suit like a misshapen sausage. The diver, impeded by heavy iron shoes and lead weights hung from his shoulder piece, is helped to the ladder on the foc’sle head. The life line is around his waist, and dangling from the rail is the skandalli tine, down which he slides and which is used to haul up the net bag of live sponges when he is below for any time.

    The Jungle of the Deep
    At ten fathoms he’ll stay down two hours, but at twenty he can only work a few minutes. Often a diver will scorn the ladder and merely plunge off the bow; coming up, he will sometimes close the air-escape valve to inflate the suit, a trick that erupts him violently from the water like a playful leaping porpoise, to the huge delight of the crew.
    But while he is down all the crew are on their toes, watching the water, the weather, the motor and the pump dials and the hose, and the life-line man is standing tense in the circular hatch on the foc’sle head, ready for the slightest signal on the life line. For there is always danger. A big black grouper can tear the rubber suit as easily as a barracuda or a shark; a sudden squall may throw the vessel’s head around, and foul the dragging air hose on a piece of coral. The diver has a knife for sharks, and almost as good a weapon is the short-handled sponge hook with which he tears the living sponges from their beds.

    The Sponge of Home
    A sponge grows on any hard surface, be it rock, coral or shell; some are even attached to the gorgeous fans and sea feathers that make the Florida reefs a paradise of color. You would never recognize a soft bleached wool sponge in his wild state. He is glistening black, a heavy vented ball of opaque jelly. As soon as a pile of them have been gathered on deck they are trod upon by the barefoot crew to break up the soft tissues, then hung over the side in net bags to decompose. Piled on deck once more, they are beaten, washed again and again in tubs of sea water, and finally scraped and strung on long cords to dry. A boat comes in with shrouds and booms festooned with sponges, since they keep much better in the open air than stowed below. And, all statements to the contrary, the strong sea smell of a fresh sponge is good – unless you are an inlander attuned only to inland smells.
    The tradition of the Anglo-Saxon has been to make life hard for himself at sea, but these sons of Hellas fail to see reason in it. Into cuddy and icebox before they leave go plump fryers by the dozen, stacks of thick steaks and the finest roasts, gallons of olives and gallons of olive oil – no substitutes, thank you! – and a long list of delicacies that would make any man’s mouth water. Officially, there is a cook aboard, but he spends most of his time washing pans and brewing the thick Greek coffee. Spongers are gourmets and love to cook, everyone from the skipper down taking a hand in it. Only the diver has to watch his eating. A cup of coffee is all he gets for breakfast, and nothing more till he is through work for the day.
    The most valuable sponges come from deep water, fifty to eighty miles offshore. Boats fishing these areas carry extra divers, since a man can work only a short time at depths of a hundred feet or more. A deep-water sheep’s-wool weighs twice as much as one of the same size growing on the shallow reefs; it is softer, closer grained, and has far greater absorbent qualities. In places the coral sea bottom is alive with sponges of all kinds and shapes and colors, but for commercial use fishermen gather only the wools, the yellows and several forms of the grass and wire varieties. The yellow sponge – you can recognize it by its dark chrome color and stiffness – ranks next, to the wool, though it is less durable. The grass and wire sponges are harsh and tear easily, but today industry has a thousand unsuspected uses for them.
    Each of the hundred and fifty-odd boats of the Tarpon fleet has its awn storeroom in the sponge exchange. Like rows of cells in a fortress, these little storerooms have doors of latticed iron, and face the open patio where the auctions are held. During the last war twenty dollars a bunch – a bunch is as many sponges as you can string on a fifty-eight-inch cord – was a fabulous price, even for the finest wools. Today’ dealers are glad to pay $200 for them. The sponge exchange is co-operative, and the entire business is probably the most democratic affair of its kind in this country. The auctions are conducted in silence, each buyer writing his bid on a piece of paper which he hands to the exchange representative. After ail the bids are in, the highest bidders are announced. If the price doesn’t suit the owner, he has the right to refuse the bid and store his catch for another auction. Everyone receives a share of the profits, from the vessel’s owner down to the greenest deck hand.
    Many of these spongers have seen the tyranny of Fascist rule. To them, freedom means something. Their sons are in the Navy, and if sponges are selling higher than ever in history, they are looking upon it as a God-given chance to pour more money into the war effort. A chance remark of Nicholas Arfaras expresses what is in the heart of every one of them: “We don’t care about money, boats, sponges, the market or anything. All that matters is winning the war.”

    1942
    (Saturday Evening Post, vol. 214, issue 51, June 20)

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