Scraping bottom

[Times photo: Scott Keeler] Sponge boat captain Taso Karistinos sorts through a catch of Rock Island No. 1 wool sponges.

In a world of 9-to-5 careers offering benefits, industry leaders say it's hard to find enough people willing to become sponge divers.

By KATHERINE GAZELLA

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 11, 2000

TARPON SPRINGS -- Just back from 29 days at sea, Dino Chilimigras looked worn out. His eyes drooped and his steps were lethargic. Dead skin formed little white beads on the palms of his overworked hands.

Chilimigras, 35, had spent a month diving for sponges, cleaning them, rearranging them on the boat deck, then diving again and cleaning again and working until he could barely stand at the end of the day.

The work wasn't over when the boat returned to port. He still had to prepare the sponges to be sold in an uncertain market where he says local buyers don't pay top price. The crew doesn't get paid until the sponges are sold and, on a recent day, Chilimigras had worked for more than a month and still wasn't sure when he would see his paycheck.

"We don't see the light at the end of the tunnel," he said.

This is the life of a sponge diver in 2000: long stints at sea, sunup-to-sundown hard labor and the kind of physical exhaustion that lingers for days after returning to shore.

Some observers of Tarpon Springs' signature industry say fewer and fewer people want to make a living as sponge divers. In the old days, it was a rite of passage for the city's young men to go on a sponging boat and learn the trade from their fathers, many of whom were Greek immigrants.

But today, especially in the midst of a strong economy with many job opportunities, most people are choosing other lines of work. With sponge diving, "there's no overtime, no sick leave," said George Billiris, a local sponge merchant who was a diver and boat captain for about 30 years before buying and selling sponges internationally.

People are drawn to 9-to-5 jobs with benefits, he said, and he doesn't blame them. "How do you compete with this?" he said.

In his ideal world, 25 boats would go out from Tarpon Springs and bring back boatloads of Tarpon Springs sponges, which many people consider the finest in the world. But there are about only 10 boats leaving from Tarpon's docks, which he said is not enough to supply him and other local merchants with sponges to sell throughout the world.

[Times photo: Scott Keeler] Michael Lontakos, left, and Manuel Psilakis trim and sort sponges in the George Billiris Sponge Merchant International Warehouse in Tarpon Springs.

Billiris and other local businessmen have been forced to buy sponges from places such as the Bahamas to meet demand, and even then, there are not enough sponges to fill every order, he said.

The people who work as sponge divers in Tarpon Springs "are all doing a real terrific job," said Billiris, 73. "But it's not enough."

While Billiris and other merchants complain that not enough sponges are coming in from local divers, the divers say the problem is that local buyers don't want to pay enough for their sponges. They say many divers are turned away by that.

"It used to be that this was good money," Chilimigras said. Now, he said, "we're sitting on a gold mine, and they're offering us peanuts."

For competitive reasons, Taso Karistinos, the captain of the boat on which Chilimigras works, didn't want to say how much he will sell his sponges for. But he said local buyers were offering about 14 percent below his desired price.

Sponge divers say that on a good trip, they might earn $1,000 for each week they're at sea, but their pay works out to less because of the work they must do when they return.

Chilimigras, who says he loves being on a boat and making a living through sponge diving, is at a turning point: Can he tolerate another 29 days at sea?

Some ex-sponge divers that Chilimigras meets give him pause. They want nothing to do with the industry. A while back, he offered to pay a former diver to help him clean some sponges. The man vehemently refused. He didn't want to be near the sponges.

"It was like a curse," Chilimigras said.

Sponge diving draws a variety of people, from Greek immigrants to local laborers.

Some, like Karistinos, learned the trade from the old-timers in Tarpon Springs, including Billiris.

Chilimigras most recently worked as a Medicaid billing specialist in Gainesville but grew weary of the dull repetition. A conversation with a colleague convinced him of the need for a job change.

"I said, "You've been in that same desk and same chair for 14 years?' " Chilimigras recalled. "He said, "Well, they changed chairs on me.' I had to get out of there."

Chilimigras likes the wide-open spaces of life on a boat and the chance to spot new stars every night.

"There's some peace," he said.

But after returning from the latest trip, Chilimigras felt anything but peaceful. Karistinos, the boat's captain, wanted to sell the crew's sponges to a local buyer, he said. But only one buyer showed up for his sponge auction. Other buyers, including Billiris, said they thought the auction had been postponed. Billiris said he would have bid on the sponges, if he had known the auction was happening that day.

The buyer who attended the auction did not want to pay Karistinos' price for the sponges, so Karistinos ended up selling them to a buyer in Detroit.

He was pleased about the selling price -- about $30,000 for the entire haul -- but selling them to a distant place meant more work for his crew and more time before they would get paid.

For Chilimigras, the delay was unwelcome. He was trying to close on a house in New Port Richey, and he had other bills to pay.

"I was counting on this money coming in," he said.

Boat captain Karistinos, who has dark hair and features and a thick accent, is something of an icon. He has appeared in documentaries about sponge diving, and local news crews have gone on short excursions with him to give viewers a glimpse of the sponging world.

But even after a 25-year career, he seems to have doubts about staying in the business. After this recent trip, Karistinos voiced what seemed to be an internal struggle about sponging. At times, he said he couldn't imagine doing anything else. In the same conversation, though, he seemed sour on sponge diving.

"I love the job," said Karistinos, 47. "But look what I have to go through."

In the end, the side of him that is tired of the sponge diving business appeared to win out. He said he might consider another career, such as bridge painting, and he might take only occasional sponge diving trips on a smaller boat. He waved his arm toward the Anastasi, his boat that can store a month's worth of sponges.

"If somebody comes up and says, "Can I buy your boat?' and they give me the right price," he said, "I'll do it right now."

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