Volos: From flooded fields to fish cemetery
How climate change, poor infrastructure, and political decisions turned the city’s waters into a scene of ecological devastation
To an unsuspecting passer-by, almost nothing would have suggested that just a week ago, the city of Volos in central Greece had resembled a dystopia, with thousands of dead fish floating in the waters of the Pagasetic Gulf. However, as you approach the Bourboulithra wetland west of the port, a lingering unpleasant smell serves as a reminder of the recent disaster. Here lies the protective net placed by the Volos Port Authority at the mouth of the Xirias stream last week to contain the dead fish. While the majority have been removed, some remnants can still be found in Bourboulithra – dismembered fish, heads, and a few tails. But why did Volos turn into a fish cemetery?
“What we experienced was the result of two flooding events – Elias and Daniel – during which about 50,000 acres was flooded, and the political decision was made to drain these waters,” explains Dimitris Klaoudatos, an associate professor in the Department of Agriculture, Ichthyology and Aquatic Environment at the University of Thessaly, in an interview with Kathimerini.
He clarifies that this area does not involve Lake Karla but the surrounding flooded regions, known as Parakarlia. The lake and its population, he emphasizes, remain unaffected. However, in Parakarlia, the conditions emerged that led to the disaster.
Ideal environment
“It’s all a chain reaction,” says Pantelis Sideropoulos, an assistant professor at the School of Rural Surveying Engineering at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. “Climate change brought extreme rainfall, and with the floods, fish from the Pineios River arrived in the area before they could reproduce,” he says. However, the environment in Parakarlia was ideal for their reproduction. “There was an abundance of food from the fields and debris, and they found a vast lake of 50,000 acres,” he notes. Then spring arrived, explains Nikitas Mylopoulos, a professor at the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Thessaly, where he is also director of the Laboratory of Hydrology and Aquatic Systems Analysis. “There was significant evaporation, the water levels began to drop, leading to a lack of oxygen, and many fish died as a result,” he says.
‘People have stopped buying fish, and last year, for at least two months, the market was dead. Now, people are already asking, “Where are the fish from? Are they from the Pagasetic Gulf?”’
Since last week, there has been intense debate about whether the sluice gate of Lake Karla should have remained open, with the Volos Prosecutor’s Office concluding in its report that it could not have been closed. The destruction, according to Mylopoulos, was not caused by the sluice gate. “The real issue was that someone needed to recognize that these fish would die in the summer,” he says. “The region failed to manage the fish from the flooded lands and take action before their breeding season began – the sluice gate needed to be open, as required by law, because environmental protection of the Parakarlia areas is a priority. But there were signs that fish were coming down from Karla; the first press releases appeared in June, and at that time, they were arriving alive. However, due to the high salinity, since they were freshwater fish, they died when they entered the Pagasetic Gulf,” Sideropoulos explains.
“There was a suspicion that some fish had come out of the Karla sluice gate,” says Anna Maria Papadimitriou, deputy governor of Magnesia, in an interview with Kathimerini. However, she emphasizes that no one expected the fish ecosystem that had formed in the flooded areas to be so large. “Unfortunately, it drains into the Pagasetic Gulf, and it was like unclogging a drain – all of a sudden, everything was flushed out. There was no way for the regional authority to stop it,” she explains, adding that they did their best to collect the fish, which were sent to a management company in Larissa, with some being sent for sanitary burial at a defunct quarry site outside Volos. By Monday, they had collected about 270 tons of dead fish, she tells Kathimerini.
For yet another year, authorities are trying to assess the damage, notes Klaoudatos. He believes that the relatively swift collection of dead fish helped prevent a “major ecological disaster.” “If they had remained for a longer period, some might have become toxic, but even now, there will be ecosystem disruption and impacts on the marine environment – the Pagasetic Gulf is a semi-enclosed system, it’s shallow, and there are undoubtedly dead fish on the seabed,” he explains. He adds that the breakdown of organic matter, combined with the byproducts of marine organisms, could disrupt the food chain and alter the population structure of species in the aquatic environment.
“There is a public health issue in the wider area; concerns about water quality persist due to the floods, with dead animals and even tractors still submerged – we are aware of this – and now the situation has worsened with the dead fish,” emphasizes Mylopoulos. However, Sidiropoulos believes there is still hope. “They need to remove everything, even from the seabed, but I don’t think the situation is irreversible – the fish were collected very quickly, before they had a chance to fully decompose.”
Fisherman and president of the Panhellenic Union of Medium Fishing Boat Owners, Ioannis Boudoukos, tells Kathimerini that those responsible for the drainage couldn’t have been unaware of the presence of fish. “We saw dead fish on the beaches near the port,” he says, referring to sightings even before last week’s events. His concern now is how this will affect the public. “People have stopped buying fish, and last year, for at least two months, the market was dead. Now, people are already asking, ‘Where are the fish from? Are they from the Pagasetic Gulf?’” he notes.
A troubled city
Despite the eerie scenes along Volos’ shoreline, the city’s residents haven’t changed their view of it. “I’ve never seen anything like this before, but the sea has always had a smell,” says Eleni Spathi, who has lived near the waterfront for the past 50 years. “We aren’t worried about what will happen to the city,” she adds, perhaps because the city has already endured so much.
Two 18-year-olds have become so accustomed to the harsh living conditions in Volos, caused by extreme weather and poor infrastructure, that the dead fish in the sea didn’t surprise them much.
“It smelled awful, but we expected something like this; the sea often brought up filth,” says Konstantinos Dikitos. Margarita Repana turns around, looking at the water splashing against the concrete with disgust. “Before and now,” she tells Kathimerini, “the water has the same disgusting color.”
