Going Places: It’s (Almost) Greek to Me

Tarpon Springs has the charm of its Greek community and sponge diving business, but you can’t forget you’re still in Florida.

I waited on a boat in a seaside town that might as well have been in Greece. Bouzouki music played in the dockside shops, and men sat drinking tiny cups of coffee outdoors in front of cafés. The crew on my boat spoke to one another in Greek, and everything about them—their dark clothes, their sun-weathered skin, their fisherman’s caps pulled low—reminded me of the men in the small towns along the Aegean. The strangest part? I was a half-hour north of Tampa.

Tarpon Springs—on the Saint Joseph Sound, 150 miles north of Southwest Florida—has been home to people from the Greek isles since the early 1900s. The initial wave of immigration began when sponge fields were discovered off Florida’s coast in 1902. The Greeks who found the sponges recruited other sponge divers to come and work. Three thousand men came over initially, and Tarpon Springs began to take on a particularly Greek feel. That feel continues today.

I was on a traditional sponge diving boat tour, the boat itself nothing like the modern boats divers currently use. Tarpon Springs still supplies 70 percent of the world’s natural sponges, and sponging remains a big business there. Today’s sponge boats go out for three weeks at a time and process the sponges while they’re still on the water.

“The smell is awful,” the captain of the tour boat told us.

Though not authentic by current standards, the tour nevertheless gave a good look at the sponge diving process from the early 20th century. We were the first tour of the day, and the diver—Taso, who runs his own sponge boat—was suited up as we waited for the boat to fill. It was a slow process, ritualistic, regal almost, as two men helped Taso into the traditional rubber wetsuit. He was a big man with a thick mustache, and he wore aviator sunglasses throughout the entire process. The men suited him into the clunky wetsuit, tightened the bolts to the brass collar around his neck and laced heavy leaden boots to his feet. Throughout all of it, Taso stood silently in his aviators. He was, clearly, the star of the show.

We motored slowly down the canal until we reached the dive spot. Not a real sponge field, the captain was quick to tell us—those take hours to reach—but a preserve they maintain for the tours. Taso was fitted into an old brass helmet hooked up to an air tube, and his two helpers dropped a wooden ladder over the side of the boat so he could descend into the water. All the tourists onboard—me included—rushed to the side. The suit was too heavy for swimming, so he had to walk across the channel floor. We followed the trail of bubbles that marked his path, and he seemed to be gone a long time. Finally, he burst through the surface of the water, sponge hook raised, a fat sponge stuck to the end. Everyone cheered.

“He got one,” someone called out.

Taso made his way back to the boat across the sea floor then climbed up the wooden ladder. The two men removed his helmet, and the aviators went back on. Still in the wetsuit, he walked around the boat signing autographs.

The captain cranked the engine, and we motored back to the docks. From there, I walked to a Greek restaurant not far from the boat for lunch. There were tourists inside like me, but locals, too, speaking Greek and digging into plates of moussaka. The waiters looked like the young men at the cafés in Athens, and the women—one in particular—looked as if they came off Grecian urns. I ordered a baklava and a Greek coffee from my table by the water, and I would have sworn I was facing the Aegean Sea.

But as I sipped the strong, sweet coffee and watched the tides, a group of manatees swam past, their nostrils blowing saltwater into the air, their big tails slapping the surface. I chuckled to myself. No, I thought. Not Greece at all.

If You Go…

  • You can buy sponges at any of the souvenir shops that border the docks, but if you want the best experience, stop by Sophia’s. She has an open-air stand in the middle of Dodecanese Boulevard, and she buys all her sponges from the local boats.
  • For lunch, Dimitri’s offers Greek cuisine with tables on the water. Don’t miss the melitzanosalta and the avgolemono soup. Be prepared for occasional shouts of “Opa.” 690 Dodecanese Blvd.; (727) 945-9400
  • The St. Nicholas Boat Line offers regular boat tours on the traditional sponge-diving process. Don’t forget your autograph from the diver at the end. 693 Dodecanese Blvd.; (727) 942-6425