Bodrum Municipality visited a group of retired sponge divers, divers, and captains on July 1 to mark Maritime and Cabotage Day, presenting gifts and spending time with people who shaped the town's relationship with the sea over decades.
The visits were organised by the Press, Broadcasting and Public Relations Directorate's Field Solutions and Coordination teams, according to reporting by Bodrum Sokak TV. The municipality described the veterans as 'important representatives of Bodrum's maritime culture.'
Why July 1 matters
July 1 marks the anniversary of the 1926 Cabotage Law, which transferred the right to operate commercial shipping in Turkish waters from foreign companies to Turkish nationals. The date is observed nationally as Maritime and Cabotage Day. For Bodrum specifically, the law had direct consequences: the town's sponge-diving trade, which had long involved Greek and other non-Turkish crews working Aegean waters, shifted toward local Turkish divers in the years that followed. Sponge diving from Bodrum became a defining economic activity through much of the twentieth century, a fact documented in local maritime histories and acknowledged by institutions including the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology.
The veterans
The source does not name individual veterans or give their ages. What it confirms is that former sponge divers were among those visited, a detail worth noting because active sponge diving from Bodrum has declined sharply since the 1980s due to synthetic sponge competition and stricter environmental controls. The people receiving gifts on July 1 represent a generation for whom diving was not recreational but a livelihood, often carried out with equipment that made the work genuinely dangerous.
A specific point for readers
If you want to understand what these veterans actually experienced, the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology holds artefacts and records related to the region's diving history and is open to visitors year-round. That is a more direct way to engage with this history than a ceremonial visit allows.
For more on Bodrum's local events and community news, see local news.
