The coastal city of Volos in central Greece has declared a state of emergency to address the aftermath of marine pollution following the discovery of tons of dead fish.
According to the Athens News Agency, Vassilis Papageorgiou, the Secretary-General of Civil Protection at the Ministry of Climate Crisis, stated that “a state of emergency has been declared for civil protection in the municipality of Volos (…) in the Thessaly region, to meet urgent needs and manage the consequences of the marine pollution that occurred in the Pagasetic Gulf.”
This environmental disaster is the second to hit the port of Volos, located 330 kilometers north of Athens, following floods that affected the Thessaly region last year.
These floods filled a nearby lake that had been drained in 1962 to combat malaria, causing it to expand to three times its normal size.
Dimitris Klaoudatos, a professor of Agriculture and Environment at the University of Thessaly, explained that “after storms Daniel and Elias last fall, approximately 20,000 hectares of plains in Thessaly were flooded, and freshwater fish were carried by rivers to the sea.”
Since then, the lake’s water levels have significantly decreased, forcing the freshwater fish to move to the port of Volos, which flows into the Pagasetic Gulf and the Aegean Sea, where they cannot survive.
