Tarpon Springs, Florida
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Tarpon Springs is a city in Pinellas County, Florida, United States. It is part of the Tampa Bay area. Its population was 25,117 as of 2020.
Dodecanese Avenue
Sponge harvest
The Spongeorama museum
Tarpon Springs Cultural Center (Old City Hall).
Sponge diving
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Sponge diving is underwater diving to collect soft natural sponges for human use.
Tarpon Springs, Florida
…A few Greek immigrants also arrived in this city during the 1890s to work in the sponge industry. In 1905, John Cocoris introduced the technique of sponge diving to Tarpon Springs by recruiting divers and crew members from Greece. The first divers came from the Saronic Gulf islands of Aegina and Hydra, but they…
Sponge diver putting on his diving suit in Tarpon Springs, Florida.
Display of natural sponges for sale on Kalymnos in Greece
1897 schematic of commercial sponge diving