dead fish at skoutari .pdf

skoutari beach: the tourists go and the fish die
by vilma nielsen
the following picture shows a part of the bay of skoutari on the peloponnese on october 5th, 2018.
people are not to be seen on it. in front of the building with the white pitched roof (i.e. the tavern
kavoulaki) on the right side of the picture the parasols and blue sunbeds have disappeared.

5 october that's off-season. but what does "off-season" actually mean? that tourists with children
don't come anymore because the children have to go to school? that foreign or domestic tourists
don't want to come because of the fluctuating weather? or is it because the ugly greece shows itself
outside the main season? let us enlarge the lower part of the picture:

on this small picture you can see about 40 dead fish. according to my count, there are more than
1.000 dead fish on the beaches of skoutari bay on this 5th of october. not only sardines, anchovies
etc. but also rare or very pretty fish like the following ones:

or:

or:

or:

or:

or:

or:

enlarged:

What the hell happened? On October 4th, 5th and 6th this fishing boat stopped at the edge of
Skoutari Bay in the morning:

A short time later a lot of seagulls gather on the sea and start hunting fish there.

At noon and in the afternoon many dead fish are washed up on the beaches and collected by some
men in plastic bags. One gets the impression that locals from Skoutari know exactly when the fish
are available. The following is an overview of the positions of the fishing boat and the fish washed
ashore.

If you ask around in the area, you get the impression that everyone knows and that this happens
every year, and that nobody is happy about it. If you ask about the way of fishing, you get different
explanations: The most blatant is that a few fishermen from the area and from Gythio practiced the
forbidden dynamit fishing. The other explanation is that there is no dynamite fishing here, but a
"different kind of fishing" (but what would that be?) for which the fishermen have a special permit
from the authorities. However, whether legal or not, in any case it is an unsustainable and
ecologically reprehensible form of fishing, because a large part of them simply rots on the beaches.
And it is obvious that all those involved have a guilty conscience or fear of trouble with tourists,
which is why they are waiting for the end of the season.
What to do? I don't know. But maybe some of you know people who could do something politically.