Dead Fish Flood Compels Greek Port City to Declare Emergency

The port city of Volos in central Greece declared a state emergency as flooding of massive amount of dead fish staretd to threaten livelihoods of locals, the state news agency announced on Saturday.

A month long emergency was declared at the port city by the climate ministry’s secretary general of civil protection. During this period the cleaning of the Pagasetic Gulf port will be taken up where tons of dead fish have piled up along the coast and in rivers, reported Athens News Agency.

It is the second environmental catastrophe to hit the port of Volos, a three-and-a-half-hour drive north of Athens after catastrophic floods hit the Thessaly region last year.

This region of Greece faced a major storm in autumn 2023 and around 20,000 hectares were flooded. Various freshwater fish were carried by rivers to the sea.

Since then the lake waters have receded drastically, forcing the freshwater fish toward the Volos port that empties into the Pagasetic Gulf and the Aegean Sea, where they cannot survive.

The dead fish are getting swept towards the Volos port. At times on a single day, 57 tons of the dead fish are washed up on beaches near Volos.

Special nets have been placed at the mouth of the Xiria River to contain the large volume of dead fish.

Tourist traffic to the area has already plunged by nearly 80 per because of the dead fish piling.