On the Sponge Islands

When Julia Martin visits the Greek islands of the Dodecanese, beauty and suffering seem inextricable. On the Sponge Islands follows her journey through Rhodes, Symi, Halki, Kalymnos, and Patmos to trace the cultural and ecological legacy of sponge diving. Because of their wonderful porosity, sea sponges have always been perfect for a myriad of human uses, and men from the islands had been diving for them and trading them since antiquity. In the late nineteenth century new deep sea diving suits made it possible to mine the seabed as never before and bring home untold wealth. It was a rich harvest that came at the cost of many lives. And it couldn’t last. Everything, one might say, flowed through sponges. Until it didn’t. Over three visits, Martin meets Aphrodite, Lefteris, Manuel, Zinovia, and others whose lives are bound to the sea. Through their stories, she uncovers the rise and fall of the sponge trade and its deep entanglement with environmental devastation. The islands bear the