Mrs. Panagiota Daskalaki is 81 years old, has 2 children and 5 grandchildren. She was born in Stavros, Thessaloniki, and in 1963 she married a fisherman from Ammouliani.

This was also the beginning of a new life near “Captain Xiphios”, as everyone called her husband. A nimble man, that was very restless and ambitious, he sailed his boat all over the Thracian Sea and many times no one knew where he was. At his side, however, was always Mrs. Panagiota, ready to provide help with everything he needed.

“My wife will never get on the boat”, Captain Xiphios said. Back then, women didn’t participate in a man’s profession. Despite this, Mrs. Panagiota, determined to earn a living, learned to sew nets, rig coils, cast a line, even twist the cotton, and carry it on foot from one village to another, to caulk the boat that was being made at the time. When she was home, Mrs. Panagiota communicated with her husband via walkie talkie, to be able to arrange the boat’s supplies, such as ice buckets and crates, but also the coordination of the truck and the loading area.

“All the other captains and workers in the port always treated me with great respect, no one ever dared to talk down to me. I also helped my husband with mapping a large part of the northern Aegean and we drew the maps together, that still exist. My grandson tried to compare these maps with new technology devices to see how accurate they were and how much the seabed morphology has changed”.

“In 1978, we built our first big boat in Kavala, with a length of 24 meters, which he wanted for fishing with fishing longlines. He was always ambitious to go further. That was the point where I started not knowing where he was. One day, he called me from Radio Hellas and told me to inform the loading truck to go to Igoumenitsa. After that, I figured that I should expect anything from that man. A few years later, he started using the wind trawler to fish to places that he’d set longlines, and after a while, he stopped fishing with longlines and continued fishing only with the wind trawler. Back then, the sea was full of fish and the market prices for fish were good”.

“Fishing doesn’t only mean fishing. It’s the boat, the fish, and everyone that stays behind. Fishing means family”.

“The catch has now declined noticeably, and there is an abundance of aquatic litter, my grandson informs me. Back then, there was not even a single piece of paper thrown into the sea”. 

“I advise the new generations to protect the sea and not pollute it. The sea means life”.

“Women today are more dynamic and fortunately there are no more social taboos. I am happy to see them getting jobs, and succeeding, even in the most difficult professions that would not have been possible before, even in the fishing sector”.