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| A 300-year-long Tradition |
THE HISTORY OF SPONGE DIVING AND HARVESTING
The legend says that a certain friar Antun, a Greek from the Island of Crete, taught the inhabitants of Krapanj how to harvest sponges in the beginning of the 18th century (around 1704). He also brought the art of sponge processing to the island. The harvested sponges were exported to Venice at that time. The sponge harvesting was first done by harpooning from the boats, a technique used by some of the sponge fishermen of Krapanj until the 1960s and 1970s. Such skilled sponge fishermen are very rare today, but there are also no sponges to be found at the depths that you can see and where the harpoon can reach.
 Sponge harvesting was the exclusive and profitable activity of the inhabitants of the island of Krapanj. For this activity, they used fishing boats weighing 4-5 tons and until 1893 they harvested sponges exclusively using harpoons; they could reach the depth of 15 meters under water. Each boat had a crew of two men: the harpooner locally called "svicar" and the rower locally called "sijavac". The yield was divided between the harpooner and the rower. The harpooner used to get half of the yield, the rower and the boat each a quarter. If the harpooner also happened to be the owner of the boat, he was entitled to two thirds of the yield, and the rower to only one. Harvesting with harpoons was not the most profitable way of sponge harvesting since it was possible only when the sea was calm. Besides, the sponges were damaged by the harpoons and, as they were scraped off the sea floor, the new generations of sponges were destroyed in the process.
During the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the government in Trieste made efforts to promote the sponge industry. In 1893, it presented the sponge cooperative in Krapanj with the first diving apparatus and a new one in 1896. This caused a conflict between the harpooners and the sponge divers.
Since the ancient times and the very beginnings of the sponge business in Krapanj, the sponge fishermen from Krapanj had gone through various crises. The main cause of these crises was the limited number of sponge beds, the fact that was especially marked at the time when diving apparatus and motor boats were first used in sponge harvesting. The area where the best sponges could be found is limited. With the application of the new diving equipment, the available resources were soon used up.
During the years before the Second World War until the 1950s and 1960s, there were 15-20 diving teams in Krapanj comprised of 7 or 8 team members.
In 1956, the fate of the sponge business on the island of Krapanj was almost sealed. The sponge fishermen had committed to a project that proved to be a failure. Six equipped teams left on a sponge harvesting mission along the coasts of Egypt. After this effort had proved unsuccessful, and the teams had returned home, the "Spuzvar" Company was shut down. The number of sponge divers started to decrease rapidly so that in 1968 there were only 11 of them.
SPONGE DIVING IN THE PAST
 The sponge business in Krapanj reached its peak of prosperity in 1912 when it used to sell up to 400 000 sponges to Italy, France and Germany. The Spuzvar Company employing 32 sponge divers was established in 1946. Comprising 10-12 teams, the company sponge divers went regularly on sponge harvesting expeditions. Apart from that, the Brodospas Company from Split used to employ 16 sponge divers from Krapanj; three Krapanj sponge divers used to work in the Split Maritime Affairs Administration; and 21 divers used to work in maritime construction companies along the Adriatic coast.
SPONGE DIVING TODAY
"There are five teams of sponge fishermen in Krapanj today and another three in Brodarica and Zaboric. There are two or three teams working in other areas of the Adriatic coast realizing an insignificant yield of 200-300 kilos, whereas diving teams from Krapanj harvest 3000-5000 kilos of sponges per year", says Grgo Milutin who started a private sponge harvesting business with his brother Boris during the 1980s. They were the first team to use only the light diving equipment.
Every team includes one or two divers so that the teams with two divers usually consist of four or five members, while the teams with one diver usually consist of three or sometimes even only two members
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