The Lives of Sponges and the Emergence of Late Ottoman Conservation

Chris Gratien, Georgetown University

Greek-American Sponge Diver, Florida (1944)
Source: Library of Congress

The history of the flora and fauna of the former Ottoman Empire has figured prominently in Tozsuz Evrak. We have shared documents concerning the movement of rare animals in the Ottoman Empire, the alleged presence of now presumed extinct megafauna, and the role of likely fictional predators in tax evasion during the late Ottoman period. These posts reveal, among many things, just how little we know about the relationship between Ottoman subjects and the other animals in the empire.

We do know generally that a number of species became extinct or dramatically decreased in number during the early modern period, when an unprecedented growth in the trade of animals and their products from fur to feathers led to the depletion of animal populations hunted and fished throughout the world for food, function, or fancy. With increasing awareness and concern about the depletion of natural resources, governments sought (albeit often unsuccessfully) to regulate this rising level of consumption. One example of this phenomenon is the emergence of hunting and fishing regulations in the Ottoman Empire during the Tanzimat period, and in particular, a regulation banning fishing during spawning seasons. 

This document concerns issues regarding the harvesting of sponges and gives some clues as to how economic transformation, ecological practices, and changing understandings of nature were intertwined during the late Ottoman period. Before the invention of neoprene in 1930, the best source of porifera - the scientific name for sponges - was the sea floor, and the longstanding practice of Greek sponge-diving is well-attested in the historical record. With increased inter-Mediterranean trade during the early modern period, sponges became a major export from the Eastern Mediterranean ports of the Ottoman Empire. Particularly with the emergence of controversial machines used to harvest sponges, concerns regarding the threat posed to the sponge population (and the sponge-diving industry) naturally arose among Ottoman regulators. However, as this document illustrates, there was a legal ambiguity surrounding sponges because of the limitations of knowledge about their lives.

This decision from Şura-yı Devlet dated May of 1896 confirms that new understandings of the natural world played a role in Ottoman policy formation and provided an impetus for increased regulation of human-animal relationships with the ascendance of scientific approaches to the environment. The document explains that sponges had not been mentioned in the ban on fishing during the spawning period (yumurta bırakma zamanı) in part because of lack of knowledge about their reproduction; however, in light of recent scientific discoveries, it was now possible to say that the harvesting of sponges during peak periods of egg production from March to the end of May should be forbidden as was the case with other sea creatures. This regulation was to be enforced in the major sponge-producing provinces of the empire: Beirut, the Archipelago Province (Islands of the Aegean), Tripoli (Libya), Benghazi, and Crete.

Of course, this was good news for amorous sponges looking to enjoy their hermaphroditic variety of sexual reproduction (not to mention three types of asexual reproduction) in peace, but the ruling also had consequences for local divers now faced with new limitations on the practice of their livelihood by presumed experts in the imperial center. In fact, the case of spawning Ottoman sponges is just one example of a broader phenomenon of governments adopting scientific knowledge as a means of claiming sovereignty over new spaces and areas of life.

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