Cypriot sea sponge - Kapadiko natural sea sponge

Have you tried a silky Cypriot sea sponge?

Have you tried a Cypriot sea sponge? You will not regret it! This kind of natural sponge exist only in the Mediteranean sea. Mediterranean sponges are silk, much softer, denser, and more absorbent. Natural sponges are not allergic. They are the perfect choice for newborns and children. Sea sponges have remained the most natural, most luxurious, most hygienic, and most healthy way to cleanse and care for the skin. 

As strange as it sounds sponges are animals that look like plants having no specialized organs such as heart, brains and lungs no locomotion and have no body symmetry. Sponges have canals throughout their bodies which open to the surrounding water, allowing both oxygen and food particles to reach each sponge.They can't walk or swim. They live in the seas especially with lukewarm water and mild sea currents at various depths. They have a hard outer shell and a soft porous inside and grows on the ocean’s floors all around the world. Used in various uses, pharmaceutical, household, personal cleanliness etc. Today instead of natural sponge widely used technical plastic imitations more economical.

How Sea Sponges are Harvested

If you want to harvest sponges you have to do it naturally and responsibly cause it needs years to grow again. Sponges usually harvested by specially trained divers who systematically rotate harvesting grounds and who always ensure that the base of the sponge is left intact (some mm.) so as to allow for healthy and productive regrowth without hindering the natural habitat within each sea sponge colony harvested from. The sponge worms settle on it and they start the reconstruction.

Professional divers use a knife to cut the sponge free from the sea floor. After the cutting, they shake it for the reason that the worm sponges are scared and they jump out. A living sponge is covered with a black skin.To remove it we have to bleach it. First we remove the shells, the stones the corals, and we sink it to potassium pangamate (is antiseptic), we leave it there for 2 minutes and after we sink it to chlorium mixed with water and immediatly you will see that is making a reaction and is that changing the natural dark color to brighter, after we have to wash it with fresh water many times and then sink it to soda powder mixed with fresh water cause sodium removes the chlorium and the potasium. Then we wash it again with fresh water many times. 

Where to buy a good sponge? Visit the Old Port Souvenir Center in Limassol to choose your own sponge and loofah.