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A proud Greek heritage is on display in Tarpon Springs

Tarpon Springs is a charming Florida Gulf Coast town known for its Greek restaurants, bakeries, gift shops and sponge merchants. It is very much a Greek community, and it traces its Greek roots back more than 100 years, when Greek divers and their families immigrated to Tarpon Springs to work in the town’s sponge trade.

Florida’s sponge industry really began in the early 1800s, many miles south of Tarpon Springs, in Key West. Men would crisscross the shallow waters off Key West in rowboats or sailboats, scooping grass sponges off the bottom with long rakes. The harvested sponges would be carried by boat to Tampa Bay, and then shipped from there to New York City.

Key West quickly became the major source of sponges for customers in New York and throughout the Northeast, but that was about to change as technology allowed men to dive to the ocean floor. Divers soon found there were larger sponge beds, and a much larger variety of sponge types, in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, further up the west coast of Florida.

By the late 1880s, a wealthy Philadelphia banker named John K. Cheney sought to take advantage of those bountiful sponge resources off Florida’s coast.  He built warehouses in the town of Tarpon Springs, and soon he, along with another businessman named Ernest Meres, became the town’s first sponge merchants. He bought sponges locally and then sold them to associates in New York City.

In 1896, a Greek immigrant who had been working in New York as a sponge buyer, John Cocoris, arrived in Tarpon Springs. He went to work for John Cheney, and soon recruited 500 sponge divers from Greece.

The Greek divers were amazed to find that the floor of the Gulf was thick with sponges of all kinds. Baskets of large wool-sponges could be quickly sent in baskets from the sea floor up to the boats that waited on the surface. Cheney and his associates added boats and divers to increase their harvest.

Just a few years after the turn of the century, there were more than 1,500 Greek sponge divers and other workers employed in the Tarpon Springs sponge trade. By 1936, that number had increased to more than 2,000, and Tarpon Springs was recognized around the world as the sponge capital of the world.

However, the sponge industry faced a number of serious challenges in the 1940s. First, Red Tide attacked the gulf and killed most of the sponges. Then, synthetic sponges were developed. and they cut into market previously dominated by natural sponges. It took more than 20 years for the sponge market to right itself.

Now, tourism has replaced sponge diving as Tarpon Springs’ major economic activity. Tourists enjoy Tarpon’s Greek influence and culture, which have survived the ups and downs of the 100-year-old sponge trade.

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Marc Washburn is a sponge merchant in Tarpon Springs and also on the Internet. His e-store, Natural Bath & Body Shop, carries traditional Greek olive oil soaps, Loofah, and a large selection of sea sponges.

Tags: Greek, Tarpon Springs