Operation to clean up underwater garbage heap off Andros gathers pace

The Hellenic Center for Marine Research (HCMR) is helping the Environment Ministry put together a tender for an ambitious and sensitive project that involves removing tons of trash from the seabed just off the western coast of Andros in the Cyclades.

“The HCMR has often been called upon to make volume measurements for port deepening projects, but this is the first time we are being commissioned to do something similar for trash. The objective is to find the area covered by the dump and to calculate the volume of trash that needs to be removed,” Ioannis Morfis, the scientific consultant and coordinator for the project, tells Kathimerini.

The underwater landfill was caused by a storm in February 2011 that swept the contents of an illegal dump that had been operating near the archaeological site of Zagora since the 1970s into the sea.

The incident was forgotten until a team of volunteer divers with Aegean Rebreath, an NGO that carries out seabed cleanups, discovered the massive underwater dump in 2019. News of the discovery of so much trash off the coast of one of Greece’s top holiday destinations made the rounds of the world.

Now, the HCMR has been tasked with measuring the volume of the trash on the seabed so the ministry can move ahead with the environmental rehabilitation operation, which is unprecedented by Greek standards.

“It’s a very complicated project because it doesn’t only involve removing the trash, but also managing that trash and implementing measures so the seabed is not negatively impacted by the operation,” the ministry’s general secretary for waste management coordination, Manolis Grafakos, tells Kathimerini.

According to what the ministry knows so far, the dump covers an area of 60,000-65,000 square meters, down to a depth of 40 meters. About 4,000 square meters have spilled over on beaches.

“We are pleased to see the central government making a serious intervention. The HCMR’s measurements will provide the information needed for an operation that is not only unprecedented in this country, but in Europe as well,” says the head of Aegean Rebreath, George Sarelakos.