He has been persistently “hunting” the history of shipwrecks in the seas of Greece for years. He possesses superior self-control while knowing from research as he searches for records and evidence. THE Kostas Thoktaridiswhose team detd the French submarine Floral which sank in 1918 during World War Ihas dived to great depths, to the abyss where light does not reach, has led underwater research in iconic missions, specialized in searches with new media and robotic devices, participated in missions of national interest and opened roads so that it exists today in the country our expertise in marine surveys.

Speaking to “Agency 104.9FM”, he explained that his starting point was not a… sponge relative from Kalymnos, since his grandfather was a… confectioner from Thessaloniki. After all, when he was born in December 1968 with Thessaloniki and Symi in his DNA, he did not imagine that today he would have thousands of hours at the bottom, thousands of recorded dives at a depth that reached 212 meters.

Instead of sugar, salt

Despite his … sweet origins, in the end it wasn’t sugar that won him life but salt. The starting point was a good friend who encouraged him to work as a diver as well as a chance meeting at the Naval Museum of Greece in Marina Zeas in Piraeus with the president of the museum, Admiral Konstantinos Paizis – Paradellis. He approached him when he saw him looking at the Italian torpedo that had hit the Elli and gave him the final push to become a top professional diver. When he was close to 18 he bought the first related book from the museum shop, an edition about the submarine “Katsonis” and today he has a special library that reaches 7,000 titles related to naval history.

Fate brought him to lead the underwater investigation in the case of the missile “Kostakos» in Samos and in «Samina» in Paros but also to connect with the destroyer “Queen Olga” in Leros, the brother of “Titanic”, the “British” in Cabo Doro, the Greek helicopter at Justthe submarine “Perseus” in Kefalonia and the process of finding the historic submarine “Katsonis” of the Hellenic Navy. Mixed gas deep diving record holder, lifeguard, frogman, underwater project inspector, operator of the advanced submersible “Thetis”, he owns and operates ROV remotely operated vehicles that can even reach a depth of a thousand meters.

These discoveries are for him an enigma, a puzzle. “Research on shipwrecks at sea is combined for me now with research on land that I connect with stories from fishermen to be able to identify, put them in a database, connect them, it’s my passion and the persistent search until it is possible for him to go there”, Costas Thoktaridis explained to APE-MPE.

From 1986 to 2024

From 1986 to 2024 underwater surveys have changed. His first dives were “difficult”, since he initially felt that the liquid element was not “for him”, but to date he has located more than 500 sunken boats of all types in the Greek seas, while he always remembers the difficult feelings from the dozens of dives in the “Express” Samina” for expertise. As he said, he was not born with any natural inclination for the liquid element. “I happened to meet the right people at the beginning and they passed on to me this passion and love for the sea and the seabed. So I continued to evolve. It’s not what we say that I entered the water and was a talent, I would say the opposite,” he explained on APE-MPE radio.

“It’s an exciting feeling to find something that no one else has seen before” is the phrase that perhaps best sums up the core of the philosophy of Kostas Thoktaridis who feels that his motivation is no longer only the stories of ships and submarines but mainly of their people. Through this occupation he specialized in deep diving, dealt with high technology, piloted a deep-sea submarine, learned how to develop his skills in robotic submarines and deep-sea submarines and believes that “the future is technology” since this is how “man can approach very great depths safely’ without a time limit on research missions. In his deepest dive with breathing apparatus he exceeded 200 meters, but according to him, the most beautiful dives take place in the shallows, where the light reaches and “there are rich colors, small fish and loved ones”.

Mr. Thoktaridis also revealed that he has prepared a new investigation on the course followed by the submarines in Greece. As he mentioned, they were passing through two places. One is between Karpathos and Rhodes and the other between Karpathos and Crete. Then “there was a diffusion of them in the Aegean according to the patrol sector”. He revealed, in fact, that from these two points the records reveal that submarines passed 252 times during the war operations in the Aegean during the Second World War.

“The number that the research revealed was incredible and it came from an old case of a submarine running aground. Over time, the research opened up and I thought it wouldn’t work…it’s a waste of time and I continued it. This brought the number of individual submarines passing these two points to 252 in the same period,” he added.

Greek diving tourism and history

Mr. Thoktaridis has also dealt with diving tourism, which does not have a long history in the country since, as he explained, Law 3409 was created in 2006. He emphasized that compared to diving Egypt, Greece does not have fish as a strong point , but the shipwrecks and their history and described diving tourism as the top advantage of our country as, as he said, “in every region there is at least one shipwreck”, which “excites tourists who are engaged in diving”. At the same time, he commented that he is influenced by the stories of the shipwrecks, stated that he is constantly reading and looking for primary sources and added that for him, the “Bretanikos”, the most famous shipwreck, after the Titanic, is in the first place in Greece. “Everyone dreams of diving in it. It attracts very few divers, the elite, about 30 people a year. It is very deep, at 117 meters, in a very difficult spot in Cabo Doro and, of course, the cost is particularly high,” he stressed.

His base, as he said, is the research vessel “Oceanis” with which he carries out his missions together with his daughter, Agapi Thoktaridis, who has been diving since she was five years old and is also the first certified female ROV pilot in Greece.

The first discovery of a WW1 submarine in Greece

Mr. Thoktaridis noted that there are more than 1,500 iron shipwrecks that have sunk in the Greek seas, while regarding the discovery in Thermaikos Gulf he said: “it is the first ship we are investigating in Northern Greece. For us in every ship the interest is the history. It’s the stories that draw us in, not the wrecks themselves. Here the most interesting thing is that there is the story of Maxime Laubeuf, the designer “father of submarines”, a legend in France. We started the research for this particular submarine in 2014 and found that it was a model with unique characteristics, with innovations for the time”.

“This class of submarines was the Pluviose of the French Navy and the Floréal was one of the 18 submarines of the class. It had been decommissioned in 1908, which means that it had been in service for ten years. It is a vessel impressive for the time, historic for its innovations, with 51 meters length, 550 tons weight, seaworthy and combat worthy with a very long range thanks to an innovative for the time double propulsion system – steam and accumulators – as well as double hull” he said. Finally, he expressed his excitement about the new discovery which, as he said, is the sixth submarine but also “…the first submarine of the First World War” that he finds in Greece.