The port city of Volos in central Greece has declared a state emergency due to an overwhelming number of dead fish that local residents fear could impact their livelihoods, as reported by the State News Agency on Saturday.
The climate ministry’s secretary-general of civil protection, Vassilis Papageorgiou, has issued a month-long emergency declaration to allocate funding and resources for the rapid cleaning of the Pagasetic Gulf port, where tons of dead fish have accumulated along the coast and in rivers, according to the Athens News Agency.
This is the second environmental disaster to strike the port of Volos, located about a three-and-a-half-hour drive north of Athens, following catastrophic floods in the Thessaly region last year.
Following the floods, a nearby lake that had been drained in 1962 to combat malaria was refilled, increasing in size threefold.
“After the storms Daniel and Elias last autumn, around 20,000 hectares (50,000 acres) of plains in Thessaly were flooded, and various freshwater fish were carried by rivers to the sea,” stated Dimitris Klaudatos, a professor of agriculture and environment at the University of Thessaly.
Since then, the lake waters have significantly receded, pushing the freshwater fish towards the Volos port, which empties into the Pagasetic Gulf and the Aegean Sea, where they cannot survive.
Authorities removed 57 tons of dead fish washed up on beaches near Volos in just one day, and efforts are underway to recover most of the dead fish that flooded the Pagasetic Gulf, with two boats completing the process, as reported by Ertnews channel.
To contain the large volume of dead fish, special nets have been placed at the mouth of the Xiria River.
Tourist traffic to the area has plummeted by nearly 80% since the flooding last year, according to the local association of restaurants and bars.
Stefanos Stefanou, the president of the association, expressed concerns earlier this week, saying, “The situation with this dead fish will be the death of us. What visitor will come to our city after this?”
The environmental crisis has triggered an investigation by the public prosecutor.
kan/giv
