Volos fish died of natural causes, not toxins
The hundreds of thousands of dead fish that flooded the Pagasetic Gulf off the eastern coast of mainland Greece in recent days died of natural causes and not of poisoning by an industrial effluent or some other toxin, an Environment Ministry official said on Saturday.
Speaking to state broadcaster ERT, Petros Varelidis, the secretary general for Natural Environment and Waters, said the issue stems back to last September’s Storm Daniel. The storm, he said, flooded Karla Lake in Thessaly, central Greece, making it grow in size and become a safe and rich ecosystem that spurred freshwater fish spawning. When the lake began to return to its natural size as a result of absorption and evaporation, the lake shrank, suffocating its unusually large fish population.
“When the drainage ditch fell below the water surface in the plain, the water suddenly gained momentum, and all these fish, dead or alive, were carried away towards the Pagasetic Gulf,” Varelidis claimed, adding that those fish which were alive died when they entered a saltwater environment.
Varelidis went on to say that cleanup efforts of Xiria stream, which links Karla to the gulf, are starting to pay off and that the situation is now under control, particularly in the seaside city of Volos, where a state of emergency has been declared.
