![]() ![]() ![]() He was described as an older, feeble man with pulmonary emphysema who couldn’t hold his breath at the surface for more than 40 seconds. His tale is not the stuff of legend but of truth, and his feats are well documented. A name still heard today is that of Georgis Stathis Hatzis, who found the anchor of the Italian battleship Regina Margherita in 1913. ![]() The brothers Sarandaki from the island of Symi are remembered in legends as “gymnasts” able to dive to 40 fathoms (240 ft). Inhabitants of the barren and arid Dodecanese Islands, whose economy depended for centuries on diving, were among the best in the water. Until the advent of scuba gear, diving was defined and limited by the physical ability of the “naked divers” who practiced it. However, the same experience and pride that made them heroes also made them vulnerable to the technological advances and trade expansion in the 19 th century. With a long history of collective experience, daily practice from early childhood and a culture of heroism, sponge divers were proud and revered providers in the subsistence economy of their communities. They feared nothing: not the depth, the dark, the giant octopus or the shark. What we know about them has been passed down mainly through oral histories, and often the line between truth and legend is blurred.Īs the story goes, Greek sponge divers worked at depths of 100 to 200 feet, staying underwater for two to three minutes on a single breath. But nobody practiced it for a lifetime like Greek sponge divers did. For several thousand years before that, though, diving was an extreme activity practiced exclusively by elite athletes, and even then it was only if they had existential reasons to do it. Advances in the design and mass production of self-contained underwater breathing equipment in the 20 th century enabled every person interested in diving to do so, especially for recreational purposes. ![]()
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