by Larry Smith
TARPON SPRINGS, Florida—As the mist rolled in across the bayou, local community leaders gathered at the Heritage Museum here last Thursday evening to celebrate their shared history with the Bahamas.
This city of 23,000 on Florida's west coast - about 30 miles north of Tampa - has had a Bahamian connection ever since an "adventurer from Nassau" named Joshua Boyer started the first family homestead here in 1877. At the time, both black and white Bahamian 'conchs' were hooking sponges and catching turtles from Key West all the way up the undeveloped gulf coast.
In a 1928 newspaper article, Boyer reminisced about those pioneer days: "I came up the Anclote River on a fishing trip and by chance stopped off at Mr. Ormond's residence. I built a residence there, and the same year Miss Mary Ormond and I were married. Everything there was ours. The land and the game and fish were as free as air."
Sponger Money Never Done
But the biggest and best-known Bahamian connection - and the one that was celebrated last week - is the link between the Greek communities of Tarpon Springs and Nassau. Both had their origins in the sponge trade, which lasted less than a century and was one of the biggest revenue earners for both the Bahamas and Florida. As the song goes, in those days it seemed that sponger money was never done.
At its peak before the Second World War, the northern Caribbean fishery removed 47 million pounds of live sponge annually and employed thousands of people and hundreds of ships in the Bahamas. But over-exploitation and disease wiped out the sponge beds by 1939, leaving the fishermen destitute. And the invention of synthetic substitutes after the war sharply reduced demand for natural sponges.
So, aside from souvenir sales, only a remnant of this once thriving industry exists today. At Red Bays, Andros it is kept alive by a lone 76-year-old Greek-American sponger named Peter Skaroulis, who provides the only regular employment for a few dozen fishermen. The Skaroulis family operates a sponge market in Tarpon Springs, continuing a way of life that began in the late 19th century, when Greeks from the Aegean islands of Kalymnos, Skopelos, Symi, Hydra and Aegina arrived in Nassau and Florida.
An Intertwined History
The shared history of these two intertwined communities was the subject of a special exhibit at the Heritage Museum in Tarpon Springs last week, and Tough Call was invited to attend. Funded by the Florida Humanities Council, the exhibit was developed by folklife researcher Dr Tina Bucuvalas, an ethnographer who is herself part Greek and who spent time in the Bahamas recently looking into family backgrounds.
"Through my research over the last couple years, I gradually came to realize that for almost a century there has been sustained interaction between the Tarpon Springs and Bahamian Greek communities," she told me. "Residents are closely related through ties of marriage, family, and culture in addition to business. These ties have developed from a shared history originating in the Greek sponge producing islands."
Until recently Dr Bucuvalas was director of the Florida Folklife Programme in the state's Bureau of Historic Preservation. But she has been named curator for the City of Tarpon Springs, a post that makes her responsible for several small museums as well as a planned folk arts gallery. She will be researching other ethnic cultures -- including the city's African-American community which also has Bahamian roots.
Although marine sponges have been sought after since ancient times, industrialisation created a growing demand for them in the cleaning, ceramics, shoe-finishing, and printing industries in addition to household, bathing, and medical uses. And this generated a lucrative international trade during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
According to Dr Bucuvalas, in her research paper for the exhibit, "The greater portion of the world trade was conducted by crews and merchants from Greece. Later, the trade diminished due to war, sponge disease and toxic algae blooms. Today the sponge industry continues on a smaller scale, its memory fuels tourism, and many aspects of its traditional culture linger."
A New Industry
Originally, the sponge business was concentrated in the Mediterranean. But in 1841, a French traveller found Bahamians harvesting sponges, and he started exporting sponges to Paris. This trade eventually encompassed Jamaica, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Mexico—although the Bahamas, Cuba, and Florida were always the largest producers.
The west side of Andros was one of the world’s great sponge beds, and sponges grew near many other Bahamian islands as well. The earliest local record, in 1843, reported the shipment of 32 sponge bales. Forty years later, when the first Greeks arrived, sponges were our most important marine product, despite the fact that most of the shallow-water sponge beds were already being fished out. By 1900 the most valuable sponges became commercially extinct in near-shore waters.
According to a 1994 memoir written by the late Charles Alexiou, who arrived in Nassau in 1925, the Vouvalis Company of Kalymnos brought in the first Greek sponge experts in 1887. "Vouvalis established his sponge room on West Bay Street between where is now the Mayfair Hotel and the (defunct) Ocean Spray Restaurant and Hotel," Mr Alexiou wrote. "He sent Aristide Damianos to manage his business. Along with Aristide came his brother George."
The Damianos brothers later set up their own business at the top of Frederick Street by the steps. Constantinos Christophilis was in Virginia Street. Pericles Maillis was based on the property where his grandson (of the same name) now has his law office. In the 1920s Christodoulos Esfakis (the father of Dr Andrew Esfakis) established an operation on Market Street. And Theophanis Mangos also worked for Vouvalis before setting up on his own business. James Mosko was brought in to rebuild the Vouvalis operatiion after the 1926 hurricane, and his son founded Mosko's Construction.
Greek Immigration
By the time Charles Alexiou arrived, the Greeks seemed to have no problem with immigration restrictions, although a 1905 law prohibited them from competing with local fishermen. But initially, Bahamian merchants had been deeply worried over the prospect of foreign competition. Writing to the Nassau Guardian in 1887, sponge merchant Joseph Brown called for legal protection:
"Twenty-four aliens have arrived, experts in the gathering, clipping and packaging of sponge, and if I am rightly informed, determined to handle it themselves in all stages from the gathering to the packing, thus excluding native labor. If the experiment should be successful, it is quite probable that we should soon have hundreds of men in our midst, whose ways are not our ways, who would form a distinct section of the population, and who would only continue to remain here until such time as the sponge beds become exhausted, or the business ceases to be profitable."
But over time the Greeks were more or less assimilated, and the second, third and fourth generations now form a close-knit community of more than 300 professionals and businesspeople clustered around the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church on West Street. Built in 1932 it was the first Greek church in the West indies, and almost all of its present congregation derive from the original spongers sent from the islands of the Aegean Sea.
"The Greek Bahamian community has remained small and close, perhaps because of their initial isolation and their commitment to maintaining their heritage," Dr Bucuvalas said. "Most first and second generation Greek Bahamians married other Greeks for social and religious reasons, but like most Diaspora peoples each succeeding generation chooses more marriage partners from outside the community."
Bahamian Descent
By 1890 Tarpon Springs had also become a significant sponge market. The first Greeks arrived there in 1897, moving the commercial centre of the American trade from Key West to the gulf coast, where pristine sponge beds had been discovered offshore. They revolutionised the industry with diving equipment, and by the first decade of the 20th century they outnumbered the traditional Key West fishermen, who were largely of Bahamian descent.
This led to conflict between the two groups of fishermen, which was "heightened by overstressed sponge resources that eventually disappeared entirely due to a synergistic relationship between overfishing and disease in the marine environment," according to Loren McClenachan writing in a 2007 Earthscan publication on marine environmental history called Oceans Past. "Understanding synergistic stresses on structural elements of the marine community is central to environmental conservation."
The eventual death of the sponge fishery can be traced to this unfortunate synergy. Without management controls, intensive fishing lowered prices which stimulated more fishing pressure. And ultimately the lack of a conservation ethic - particularly with respect to the taking of undersized sponges - led to the collapse of the fishery in the 1930s.
According to the Earthscan publication, "In December 1938, spongers on the other side of the Gulf Stream in the Bahamas began to have an odd and disconcerting experience, one which the old-timers had never witnessed. Instead of pulling up intact sponges, hooks came to the surface with only slivers and strings; the rest of the sponge skeleton had disintegrated...The mysterious blight that struck the sponge beds quickly reached epidemic proportions...The culprit appeared to be a fungus-like filament."
Sponger Money Gone
By 1940 the disease had worked its way up to Tarpon Springs, putting the remaining sponge fishermen out of work. Experts say the epidemic was "intimately linked to overfishing". In fact, the sponge divers themselves probably helped spread the disease by squeezing the sponge "gurry" into the water. Just as overfishing only increased the concentrations of disease-causing bacteria and fungal cells in the seawater over sponge beds.
Sponges filter bacteria out of the water as they feed. And according to Earthscan, "Over the course of the fishery traditional spongers and divers took more than 1.5 billion pounds of living sponges from the norhern Caribbean, so that the water during the 1930s was certainly richer in bacteria, fungi, algae and other tiny particles than it had been a century earlier...evidence exists that at high concentrations bacteria that are typically benign can become virulent and...diseases more prevalent."
In 1992 state and federal governments outlawed all sponging in South Florida's national parks. And since then sponges have joined a list of once abundant animals - including lobster, conch, turtles, and grouper - that are now protected by law. And a related law makes it a felony to trade any wildlife taken in contravention of those protections.
Today, although some commercial harvesting still takes place, the sponge trade is more of a tourist attraction in Florida. Nevertheless, Tarpon Springs has managed to preserve a strong Greek character and maritime heritage. In fact, the museum where the Bahamian Connection exhibit was held sits on the edge of a marine inlet where the Greeks celebrate the Epiphany each year by throwing a cross into the sea for divers to retrieve - the same ceremony practised by Nassau Greeks. And the imposing St Nicolas Greek Orthodox Church is not far away.
Conservation and Culture
According to Dr Bucuvalas, "The Greeks gradually began to control municipal politics as the majority or by allying themselves with black Tarponites. Blacks of Bahamian descent had arrived in Tarpon Springs from Key West in the late 19th century. They often developed close relationships with the Greeks when they worked on the boats, and some learned to speak Greek with a Dodecanese accent.
"Since the Bahamian Greek community is small, many members have sought marriage partners in Tarpon Springs. The dominant population in both locations is from the Dodecanese Islands and particularly Kalymnos, so people have also looked to their home islands when they decided to marry. Consequently, the two communities share an extensive and intricate network of family ties...and Greeks still control the sponge business both communities."
But aside from its cultural fascination, the history of the Bahamas and Florida sponge fishery has important lessons for the future of other valuable marine resources like conch, lobster and grouper. These resources are not limitless. And they are valuable not just in terms of our own pocketbook, but because of the contribution they make to the health of the natural ecosystems on which we rely.
As is the case today with the Nassau grouper, careful management is a critical challenge. It is a challenge we must meet if we are to maintain our present way of life.
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