Greek authorities have begun collecting hundreds of thousands of dead fish that washed up in a marina in the central Greek city of Volos this week after being displaced from their natural freshwater habitat by floods in Thessaly last year. The dead fish have created a silvery pall over the port and a stench that has alarmed residents and officials who rushed to collect them before the smell reaches nearby restaurants and hotels.

“It stretches for kilometers,” city councilor Stelios Limnios told Reuters online. “It is not only along the coast, but also in the middle of the Pagasetic Gulf,” he added, referring to the area off Volos.

On Wednesday, fishing boats used nets to scoop up fish that were then dumped onto the backs of trucks. More than 40 tonnes of the fish have been collected in the past 24 hours, authorities said. Volos Mayor Achilleas Beos said the smell was unbearable. At a news conference on Wednesday, he blamed the government for failing to address the problem before it reached his city. He said the rotting fish could create an environmental disaster for other species in the area. Experts said the problem was caused by last year’s record floods that inundated the Thessalian plain further north. The floods filled nearby Lake Karla, which was drained in 1962 in an effort to fight malaria, swelling it to three times its normal size. Since then, the lake's waters have receded dramatically, forcing freshwater fish that ended up in Karla to head through a canal to the port of Volos that flows into the Pagasetic Gulf and the Aegean Sea, where they cannot survive. There was no net at the mouth of the canal leading to Volos, experts added, and when the fish met the sea, the salt water probably killed them.

“They didn’t do the obvious, put up a safety net,” Mayor Beos said, referring to government services.

An investigation has been opened into the incident to ascertain any responsibilities.

(Online Union)

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