A mass die-off of fish in Greece's port of Volos has raised a massive stink and led to the country declaring a state of emergency. The deaths are believed to be linked to climate change after historic storms and flooding washed the freshwater animals out to sea.
Authorities in central Greece told the New York Times that they had dredged more than 100 tons of dead fish from the waters around the scenic summer destination. Visuals doing rounds on social media show a silvery blanket of dead fish that formed off the port last week.
The month-long emergency was announced by the climate ministry's secretary general of civil protection, Vassilis Papageorgiou. The Greek government is trying to speed up the cleaning of the port where tons of dead fish have piled up along the coast and in rivers, Athens News Agency reported.
This is the second environmental catastrophe to hit the region after catastrophic floods hit the Thessaly region last year. Those floods refilled a nearby lake that had been drained in 1962 in a bid to fight malaria, swelling it to three times its normal size.
"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, Dimitris Klaudatos, a professor of agriculture and environment at the University of Thessaly told Gulf News.
Since then the lake waters have receded significantly, forcing the freshwater fish toward the Volos port which opens into the sea. The fish used to the freshwater, could not survive in salty seawater.
As authorities continue to remove the dead fish, special nets have been placed at the mouth of the Xiria River to contain their large volume.
Tourist traffic to the area has already plunged by nearly 80 percent since last year's flooding, according to the local association of restaurants and bars.
"The situation with this dead fish will be the death of us," said Stefanos Stefanou, the president of the association earlier this week. "What visitor will come to our city after this?"
The environmental crisis has prompted an investigation by a public prosecutor.
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