A statue in honor of Eugenia Mastoridou, recognized as the first female diver in Greece, was unveiled last year at the port of Symi during a special ceremony, part of the island’s annual Symi Festival.
Symi is part of the Dodecanese island group. It’s known for its beaches, an annual music festival and for the harbor at Symi Town, surrounded by colorful neoclassical houses.
Eugenia Mastoridou, better known to the locals as “Kyra Fotena,” made history in 1863 when she became the first woman to dive using a scuba diving suit in the port of Symi.
Her groundbreaking dive wasn’t just symbolic—it was strategic. At the time, sponge divers in Symi, and across the Dodecanese, practiced free diving, plunging naked into the sea and holding their breath to collect sponges from the seabed. Eugenia’s dive was a powerful gesture aimed at encouraging these traditional divers to adopt the revolutionary diving suit, which allowed for longer, deeper, and more efficient dives.
The event was not without resistance. The introduction of diving suits in the region sparked controversy and fear among sponge divers, who were unfamiliar with the technology and wary of its risks. But Eugenia’s dive, performed publicly and fearlessly in the harbor, helped shift perceptions. It marked the beginning of a new era in sponge diving for the Greek islands.
According to Mayor Eleftherios Papakalodoukas, who spoke recently to the Athens–Macedonian News Agency (AMNA), the initiative to honor Eugenia Mastoridou reflects the municipality’s effort to preserve and celebrate Symi’s rich maritime heritage. The statue was sculpted by renowned Kalymnian artist Sakellaris Koutouzis and financed by Symian benefactor Alexandros Kokkinos.
The story of Symi’s first female sponge diver
The story of the diving suit in Greece traces back to Fotis Mastoridis, Eugenia’s husband, a sea captain from Symi. In 1862, after working with the British on shipwreck recovery missions in the East Indies and Ceylon, Fotis returned home with a complete diving apparatus, a gift from his English collaborators. Although he wasn’t a diver himself, he believed in the suit’s potential and sought to introduce it to the sponge divers of Symi.
Despite initial skepticism—and a strong preference for the time-honored method of free diving—Mastoridis staged a demonstration with his wife. Dressed in the heavy suit, with its helmet and weighted boots, Eugenia became the first person to dive with the equipment in Greek waters, proving not only the suit’s functionality but also challenging prevailing gender norms of the era.
Use of the diving suit gradually spread
After that pivotal dive, use of the diving suit gradually spread: first throughout Symi, and then to Kalymnos, Chalki and Kastelorizo by 1864, and then to Hydra and Aegina by 1866. However, this transition came with tragic consequences. Divers were unaware of the physiological dangers of compressed-air diving—especially decompression sickness (“the bends”). Between 1866 and 1915, sponge diving islands reported hundreds of deaths and thousands of cases of paralysis, in stark contrast to the relatively low mortality of traditional free diving.
This tension between old and new led to violent episodes, particularly in Symi and Kalymnos, where disputes over sponge diving rights and methods destroyed many diving suits. In 1866, the Greek authorities briefly banned the use of diving suits, though the ban was soon lifted due to economic pressures.
Meanwhile, in 1865, French inventors Rouquayrol and Denayrouze developed the first semi-autonomous diving apparatus, known as the “airship.” It received pressurized air from the surface but included a back-mounted air tank, enabling divers to temporarily disconnect and move independently—a forerunner of modern scuba technology.
Today, the memory of Eugenia Mastoridou stands as a powerful symbol of courage, innovation, and the quiet determination that helped transform the future of sponge diving in Greece. Her legacy will now be permanently commemorated at the very harbor where she took that fateful dive—in the heart of Symi.
Related: The Greek Sponge Diver Who Became a Statue on Kalymnos
