In the early morning, before the sun had warmed the walls of Bodrum Castle, small wooden boats slipped quietly out of the harbour. The men aboard said little. They knew the sea — where to find what at which depth, which cove concealed the sponge beds below, which season brought the current around. That knowledge didn't come from books. It passed from father to son, from master to apprentice. And every morning, one of those boats might not bring them back.
A City's Livelihood
From the late 19th century to the middle of the 20th, Bodrum's economy lay largely at the bottom of the sea — quite literally. Natural sea sponges harvested from the Aegean and Mediterranean were in heavy demand across Europe: an export network stretching from Rhodes to Italy, from France to Greece sustained this small town. Bathhouses, hospitals, dyers and ordinary households all depended on natural sponge, and those sponges came up from Bodrum's waters.
During the Ottoman period, sponge diving had grown well beyond a commercial activity. The trade carried its own hierarchy: the boat-owning captain, the experienced divers, and the young apprentices. The season opened in spring and closed in autumn. Divers would sometimes spend weeks away from home, moving from cove to cove among the Aegean islands — tracing the routes of today's Blue Voyage, but under far harsher conditions.
Breath, Depth and the "Hit"
The oldest and most dangerous form of sponge diving was what we now call freediving or apnea: a single breath, no equipment, only a stone tied to the waist for ballast. Experienced divers could reach 30 to 40 metres with ease — depths that exceed the limits of recreational diving today. Time at the bottom was short, but the cumulative toll of years spent making those descents and ascents left a permanent mark on the body.
Time runs differently at the bottom of the sea. The lungs compress, the ears ring, eyes search the half-dark for the sponge beds. The boat above looks like a kind of hope.
Towards the end of the 19th century, divers arriving from the Greek islands brought a new technology to Bodrum: the heavy copper-helmeted diving suit and the air compressor. The equipment made it possible to go deeper, for longer. But it brought a nightmare with it: decompression sickness, what the divers called the "hit." Nitrogen bubbles forming in the blood from surfacing too quickly could cause paralysis and death. Medical understanding hadn't yet caught up; many divers lost their lives or were left disabled without ever fully understanding why. In the old neighbourhoods of Bodrum, some families still carry the memory of those wheelchairs.
Through the Eyes of the Fisher of Halicarnassus
Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı arrived in Bodrum in 1925, exiled, and came face to face with this world. He spent time with the sponge divers, boarded their boats, listened to their stories. The tales and novels he wrote brought to the page a world almost entirely absent from Turkish literature until then: men who had forged a relationship with the sea that was at once a livelihood and an existential condition, who had made danger into a trade, who carried a quiet and particular dignity.
The Fisher of Halicarnassus wrote openly of his admiration for these men. He didn't glorify them — didn't idealise or romanticise — he simply recorded what he saw and heard. That's why those pages still feel alive today: a document of a real trade, a real danger, and a real town.
Equipment in a Museum, Silence in the Water
From the mid-20th century onwards, sponge diving declined rapidly. The spread of synthetic sponge production all but eliminated demand for the natural material. In some Aegean coves, divers had over-harvested the beds and emptied the seafloor. Within a generation, the trade had almost entirely disappeared.
Today, the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology displays equipment from that era: copper helmets, heavy suits, air hoses. Seen through glass, these objects require imagination — the body behind them, the breath, the depth. Some of the stone houses in Bodrum's old neighbourhoods were built with money earned from sponge exports. We rarely pause to notice how much the town's character owes to that quiet, dangerous trade.
The wooden boats that left the harbour before dawn are gone now. But the same waters are still being explored — at a different pace, in different comfort, but with the same curiosity. Perhaps the reason the sea draws people to these shores has never really changed: there is always something kept at the bottom.
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