Greek authorities have started collecting hundreds of thousands of dead fish that poured into a tourist port in the city of Volos this week after being displaced from their usual freshwater habitats during flooding last year.
The floating carcasses created a silvery blanket across the port and a stench that alarmed residents and authorities who raced to scoop them up before the odour reached nearby restaurants and hotels.
Tawlers dragged nets to collect the fish that were then dumped in the back of trucks. More than 40 tonnes have been collected in the last 24 hours, authorities said.
Volos mayor Achilleas Beos said the smell was unbearable. He blamed the government for not dealing with the problem before it reached his city. He said that rotting fish could create an environmental disaster for other species in the area.
Experts said the problem was caused by historic floods last year that inundated Thessaly plain farther north. The floods refilled a nearby lake that had been drained in 1962 in a bid to fight malaria, swelling it to three times its normal size.
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.
A net was not placed at the mouth of the river leading into Volos, the experts said. When the fish met the sea, the saltwater likely killed them.
