Since ancient times the Greeks knew and used the sea sponges as the best natural products for personal hygiene and body skin care.

The Romans also, well known for their famous baths, appreciated immensely the soft quality and the hygienic properties of the natural sea sponges. They made extensive use of natural sea sponges in their everyday personal hygiene and bathroom habits.

The Greek Islands with SIMI, CHALKI and KALYMNOS in the lead have been the most famous and active places for ‘fishing’ and trading the best natural sea sponges all over the world.

Greek ‘SKIN DIVERS’ from many islands would literally 'plough' across  the Greek deep and hot sea waters to collect the best and well known worldwide Greek sea sponges.

It seems that in KALYMNOS the sponge 'fishing' (called 'spogaleeia') started some 300 years ago and the first Kalymnian  divers used to dive with no special protective equipment (‘SKIN DIVERS’).

At that time the divers would 'plunge' into the sea from a small boat with few crew. The diver would carry with him a cylinder shaped glass lense to help him view the sea bed and spot the sponges.

To help him go down fast the ‘skin diver’ would hold in his arms a heavy stone (15 Kgr) called 'skandalopetra'!

The diver would cut clean the sponge from  the sea floor, put it in a net (called 'dihty') and bring it up to the boat.

In each diving (called 'voutia') the diver would remain 3-5 minutes underwater and he would reach up to 30 meters deep.  

At the beginning of the 19th century Kalymnos and other Greek islands saw a boom of their sponge industry thanks to a new diving standard diving suit called 'skafandron'.

With 'skafandro' the Greek divers could dive deeper (70 meters) and stay much longer underwater.

So the divers soon discovered the better quality and bigger sponges that lived at deeper and hotter waters.

Larger ships with more crew (called 'spogoalieftika') started sailing the Aegean Sea (Pelagos) and sailed across the Mediterranean sea as far as Libya and Egypt, Lebanon and Syria.

These sails could last long time and crew and divers could miss their families for up to 6 months. This is the reason that each island developed their customs to celebrate the time all the ships would leave the little ports full of dreams and aspirations for a ‘good catch' and receive them back, few months later full of sponges and desires to meet with their beloved people parents, wives, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, lovers, friends, etc.

Along with the business boom and the good money the standard diving suit brought to the islands, the divers had to pay deathly tolls by the name of 'divers' disease'.

That disease was caused by the 'quick decompression' and the production of ‘air bubbles’ in the divers’s blood. The 'disease' often caused serious paralysis and very often through a confined life ended in early death.

It is estimated that the first year the standard diving suit was used almost half of the divers were affected and either became paralyzed or died. The numbers recorded show that in total 10.000 divers died and 20.000 were paralyzed permanently.

At the beginning of the 20th century the use of the standard diving suit had to be abandoned and many Greek divers moved to other countries, as far as Florida, to look for new opportunities and sponge diving.

At that time safer diving equipment was appearing in the market produced by Nicolas Toth in Florida.

In the fifties sponge 'fishing' went down and for reasons not well known the sponges were affected and disappeared almost to extinction. Today there are only few islanders who 'sponge fish' around the Greek seas and this is the reason that the top quality, famous Greek sponges are scarced and difficult to find.

But what is the real nature of sea sponges?

Believe it or not the sea sponges belong to the animal kingdom!

They are ANIMALS (invertebrate)!!

Sea sponges are of course of the simplest form of multi-cellular animals. They live in deep seas attaching themselves to the sea bottom and in locations rich of food for them.

They grow in different shapes, colours and sizes. Sometimes they grow into 'apartments buildings' accommodating many individual sponges.

Sponges belong to the class of Phylum Porifera which denotes that their 'body' is covered by numerous pores. These multi-numbered pores are very important for the life of the sponge and they must be kept freely open for them to 'breath' properly.

This is why the sea sponges are very vulnerable to sea oil pollution when their surface is covered with a fine film of oil, the pores get  blocked and the sponge can't 'breath'.

The sea sponges are classified into four major groups or categories.

1. The Calcarea group, which are marine sponges with a skeleton that contains calcium carbonate

 2. The Sclerospongiae group which is the ‘complicated’ part of the groups.

They are made of thin silia and a soft sponging skeleton that surrounds a stronger central calcerous skeleton.

3. The Dermospongia group that contains the few freshwater cousins and are made up of soft protein material.

4. The Hexactinellida group that lives in the deep seas and is the group that gets all the human interest.

They have skeleton made of silica and they grow in a variety of beautiful colours. Because of the silica they are often called the glass sponges (silica is a substance used to make glass).

Sponges found in the Mediterannean Greek Sea are considered of the best quality, followed by the Red Sea sponges and the West Indian sponges. Sponges of lower quality can be found throughout the world’s seas and also in freshwaters.

The sponges are of high quality when their skeleton is composed of a soft, flexible, yet durable substance (the sponging tissue) and at the same time they contain no hard spicules.

The natural soft bath sponge, is actually the skeleton of these living sponges. The living tissue is dried, washed and bleached resulting in the soft, smooth, flexible, absorbent sponge that many of us enjoy to use in our bathrooms (and households).

The natural sponge's properties and characteristics, such as soft firmness, high absorption, long endurance, complete absence of harmful static electricity and its natural bio-structure, ensure that sponges will always be the product of choice for their uses.

It is true though that modern chemical technology has improved the quality of synthetic sponges and the 'plastic' sponges are trying to make up for the scarcity of the natural sponges and close the gap between offer and demand.

Sponges today find many uses and applications:

-      Body and face skin care (bathing, applying and removing make-up, cleansing, etc.)

-      Baby skin care and bathing

-      Delicate art, pottery, pocelain, leather and wood workings restorations

Today sponges have found their way into the medical laboratories because bio-scientists and doctors are intrested in a chemical contained in the sponges, which seems to have the power to kill cancerogenous cells in humans!