"Before the invention of synthetic sponges, divers culled the seabeds of the Aegean for animal sponges or "sea gold" to supply global demand, while risking paralysis or death from decompression disease. This is a study of sponge diving and the impact of the industry on the inhabitants of Kalymnos and Mediterranean. It is a record of the 10,000 divers who died, the 20,000 who were paralysed between 1886 and 1910, and the women who were there to sustain them when they returned home"--
Aegean Sponge Fishing and the Island of Kalymnos offers a detailed study of the fishery and the divers in the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as an ethnographic history, and an anthropological and cultural study of the island of Kalymnos and its inhabitants.
AUTHOR: Evdokia Olympitou (1962 - 2011), Ph.D., was a researcher at the Centre for Neo-Hellenic Research at the Institute for Historical Research of the Hellenic National Research Foundation from 1994 - 2003. From 2003 - 2011, she was an assistant professor of ethnology in the Department of History at the Ionian University.
EDITOR: Joyce Goggin, Ph.D., is a senior lecturer in literature at the University of Amsterdam. She has published widely on various topics in literature, media studies, popular culture, film, and art history.
