A statue in memory of Eugenia Mastoridou, the first female diver, is to be erected in the port of Symi in a special event to be held next August.

Eugenia Mastoridou was the first woman to dive with a diving suit in the port of Symi to convince the spongers to use it in their dives, since until then the spongers used to dive naked to remove the sponges from the seabed while holding their breath.

In this context, as the mayor of Symi, Eleftherios Papakalodoukas, told APE-MPE, the municipality decided to honor Eugenia Mastoridou, and the statue built by the Kalymnian sculptor Sakellaris Koutouzis at the expense of Alexander Kokkinos of Symia, is already on the island.

Who was Eugenia Mastoridou, known as “Kyra Fotena”

The scuba diver was able to stay at the bottom longer than a naked diver.

The wife of Fotis Mastoridis, Eugenia or otherwise better known as Kyra Fotena, in order to encourage the divers who until then dived naked, put on the diving suit, hence the name “dress”, and dived into the harbor of Symi in 1863.

According to the historical data, Fotis Mastoridis from Symi brought the first diving suit to Greece in 1862. Mastoridis was not a diver, but he worked as a captain with the British in raising shipwrecks in the East Indies and Ceylon. The English gave him a full diving suit with his equipment as a gift. He went to Symi in 1862 with this outfit and tried to convince the sponge fishermen to use it in sponge fishing, as its use – due to the possibility of the diver staying longer on the bottom – ensured the catch of larger quantities.

But because the divers remained skeptical – since there was the related, due to ignorance, fear – he did a demonstration in the port of Symi with his wife as the first diver. In 1863 it began to be widely used by the spongers of Symi. In 1864 diving suits began to be used by spongalians of Kalymnos, Chalkis and Kastelorizos, while in 1866 they were used by Hydraians and Aeginites.

The use of the diving suit that was made at that time, without knowledge of the risks that existed – which were related to the decompression process – had the consequence that from 1866 to 1915 hundreds of deaths and thousands of cases of paralysis due to “diver’s disease” in the sponging islands of the Aegean. In the same period there were only 10 deaths of nude divers.

However, the competition between scuba divers (‘engineers’ as they were called) and free divers (naked divers) remained unequal, which caused many incidents in Symi and Kalymnos resulting in the destruction of many scuba divers. In 1866 the use of diving suits was banned, but the ban did not last long.

At the same time, in 1865 the Frenchmen Rouquavrol and Denavorouze built the first semi-autonomous diving boat, also called an “airship”.

It was a new type of diving suit that received air under pressure from the surface, but had a cylinder – a kind of tank on its back – which was filled with compressed air and enabled the diver, at any time he wished, to break contact with the surface , to leave the tube and act as a scuba diver.