SPONGES AND CORALS 



diving, with or without stones, cannot be called ''sea 

 exploration". To early man the sea was a monster, 

 inspiring fear rather than curiosity, and he had to 

 develop confidence in himself by exploring his land sur- 

 faces before he ventured far across the oceans, or down 

 to any considerable depth in the coastal waters. 



Although the Greeks were the first to realize the value 

 of the sponge as an article of commerce and develop it 

 into a large industry, employing thousands of people and 

 sometimes entire towns, the fact that it is of use to man 

 in an infinite variety of ways suggests that it must have 

 been known to primitive peoples, and that it must have 

 been one of man's first incentives to explore the sea. 

 The sponge thrives amongst marine grass and on flat 

 sea-beds and is often thrown up on the shore, where, by 

 the action of the waves, it is rolled in the sand and freed 

 from its outer skin and sarcode, so that it was literally a 

 gift to primitive man, inviting him to venture into the 

 waters and find more. 



The Egyptians and Phoenicians are believed to have 

 discovered this natural throwing-up and cleansing pro- 

 cess of the sponge, and it is probable that the latter intro- 

 duced it to the Greeks, who began the sponge industry. 

 Then for centuries the Dodecanese became the centres of 

 sponge fishing — islands which included Kos, where Hip- 

 pocrates, the father of medicine, lived ; and Patmos, where 

 John, the exiled mystic, wrote the Revelation of the Bible. 



Sponge fishing spread to other parts of the world — to 

 the Gulf of Mexico, where millions of sponges had multi- 

 pHed in the warm waters, unmolested and commercially 

 unexploited. Key West was the centre of the sponge 

 industry there, but it was not until John K. Gheyney 

 organized it in 1890, and began to buy and send out 

 hooker boats from Tarpon Springs that the Gulf chal- 

 lenged the Dodecanese Islands as a sponge market. 

 Divers came to Key West from the islands, and from 

 Greece, bringing diving-suits and plans for diving boats, 



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