The Marine Amazonia of Europe: Greek Seas, fishing aquaculture and corporate and government corruption

Introduction

Greece is a country which at present has an economy in crisis. In order that it recovers it will have to turn to its own natural resources at least to an extent. This off course will include its seas and coastal areas, which effectively cover more than half the country and that are a hotspot for global biodiversity but at the same time under intense and ever increasing pressure from anthropogenic activities and erroneous government policies. Fishing and aquaculture are at present the most important activities in terms of ecological impact in this zone yet ecological sustainability in these sectors is very low in the government and corporate agenda.

The Greek Seas and coastline

Greek sea and adjacent coastal areas cover more than half of the country.  Greece has the 11^th longest coastline in the world with 13,676 km (8,498 mi); its land boundary is 1,160 km (721 mi). It is also important to note that the majority of the Greek population inhabits the coast and the islands.

Greek marine waters harbor an ecosystem that is in one of the world biodiversity hotspots including coral communities, and species like the Mediterranean monk seal a critically endangered animal with only 300 individuals left on the planet, being at present more threatened than the African mountain gorilla. At present a variety of economic activities occur. Two of these are fishing and aquaculture.

Fishing

The fishing sector in Greece is one of the most important activities both ecologically and economically in coastal and marine Greece. In 2008 Greece accounted for 19% of the EU's fishing haul in the Mediterranean Sea, ranked third with 85,493 tons, and ranked first in the number of fishing vessels in the Mediterranean between European Union members. Additionally, the country ranked 11th in the EU in total quantity of fish caught, with 87,461 tons. This figure does not include subsistence and sport fishing which is a popular activity culturally within Greece and for which only general figures can be quoted.

At present overfishing and destructive fishing practices are common with government fiscalization authorities simply underperforming at their role in general with a consequence of that being the emptying of Greek seas.

Furthermore the favoring of commercial scale trawlers by the relevant Greek and EU bodies is also catalytic towards this degradation. This favoring has among other things included the assisted slow disappearance of subsistence and other traditional forms of fishing through actions such as the non issuance of new professional fishing licenses, and the funded destruction of traditional fishing vessels .These industrial trawlers also pay a lot less attention to the local ecosystem due to the fact that they are not usually native to the specific regions that they fish.

In 2014 a relevant shocking development with respect to fishing in Greece took place. This was the complete abolishment on all types of amateur fishing licenses. This practically means that now anyone can go and fish provided that if there was a government inspection of their person they would not have numbers and sizes of species that are prohibited based on relevant legislation.

The ecological consequences of this legal change are dire because now the volume of what is caught is essentially set to infinity for this type of fishing. This is off course ecologically unsustainable.

This would in long term be disastrous considering the fact that many tourists both from within and outside the country visit the coastal and marine zones and can potentially go fishing.   This does not include other kinds of non recreation fishermen that can benefit their short term financial income from this.

In addition to this in early 2015 just a few weeks before the national election new legislation was issued that now allowed a long banned destructive fishing practice to be carried out for purposes of scientific investigation that could be issued to any kind of trawler. This was winch fishing. The assurance was given by the relevant government scientists and authorities that the practice can be sustainable and it will be carried out for this purpose only. The European Union (EU) supports this despite a ban existing on this practice at the EU level claiming that this legislative change will help in designing a sustainable model for this practice. The measure is reminiscent of the scientific whaling carried out at present under the legal protection umbrella of the Japanese government.

As has been shown in other cases worldwide this policy of giving access at unsustainable levels to natural resources or selective gifts such as free land in exchange for political favors is equivalent to the access seen here. The disastrous consequences of this are obvious.

 Marine and coastal aquaculture

The question that immediately comes to mind is why the government and the EU are creating and implementing policies for the destruction of wild fish stocks and the disappearance of fishing especially traditional one by local coastal communities other than the obvious short term political gain resulting from the giving of such privileges.

Perhaps one of the reasons is that the long term is its replacement with something else which is more controllable but not necessarily more sustainable.

This is almost certainly industrial corporate driven aquaculture and it deserves special mention.

Greece has the largest aquaculture industry in the Mediterranean and one of the largest in Europe.

 At the same time the Greek seas have been emptying of wild fish and other related marine animals they have been rapidly filling up with fish farms where populations as far as biomass is concerned have been practically replacing the wild ones albeit inside pens. These frequently escape from inside them to breed with wild members of the same species and lead to genetic contamination of the latter populations.

It is not surprising therefore that funding for this has come to an extent by the joint Fisheries and aquaculture division of the EU. In addition to this funds have come from the Greek government, recapitalization of the Greek stock exchange following its crash in 2002, loans from the now bought over former agricultural bank of Greece and private investors mostly from within the country. This led to an explosion of new farms and facilities surrounding the Greek coastline relative to the first established farm area of 1983.

Eventually this advancement led to conflicts with local communities of the coastline  and relevant nongovernmental and government organizations ranging from city councils to Environmental protection NGOs resulting in the creation of the Pan-Hellenic movement of legal entities of areas where aquaculture advancement hinders the interests of its inhabitants.

In 2011 the Greek prime minister at the time George Papandreou was asking for a vote of confidence by the Greek parliament. Without this he would have to go to elections at a national level. During the exact days the procedures for this request where being made publically in the Greek parliament a new ministerial decree was being created. Its weight was off course equivalent to any other piece of legislation.

This piece of legislation was the aquaculture ministerial decree that essentially divided the Greek marine and terrestrial space according to the desires of the aquaculture industry. This was turned into detailed legislation in late 2014 making the whole scheme even stronger legally. Finally after this a new addition to the Greek legislation was made that allowed any kind of aquaculture facility within any kind of nature protected area on both land and water. Legal battles with respect to this are ensuing at present in higher Greek courts.

In these farms occurs the growing of fish that are being raised on a mixture of wild fish meal from unsustainable fishing practices and soya  that may very well include   produce of deforested areas of the Amazon for the latter. These convert only 10% of that to animal protein due to the fact that they are basically carnivorous. The use of genetic engineering may very well be happening as the use of biotechnology was admitted openly in the 2014 court hearing for the relevant ministerial decree before the council of state.

It is important to note here that farm effluents filtration and safe disposal systems are nonexistent. This is based on government and industry backed scientific research that states that for a unit that can produce sometimes many hundred tones of fish a year all effects dissipate within 200 m of the center of the fish pen.

Research from Stanford University USA, indicates that this is hardly the case probably but rather that it travels many kilometers. For other meat producing plants like poultry a sophisticated legislative framework exists to prevent effluent discharge in the sea or in the environment in general in Greece however. This indicates an unusual affection towards this industry by government, industry and relevant nongovernmental organizations. This is especially evident in certain government reports of scientific research. The welfare of the animals in these appears to be of no importance.

These farms have been proven to be placed inside the spawning habitats of wild fish due to the fact that these sites have ideal conditions for the growth and development of young fish of several species. The ecological destruction is more apparent than one would originally suspect since these are actually limited to few hundred square meters. Photos 6 and 7 show the situation with sardine in the Ionian Sea and the inner Ionian marine reserve relative to the existing farms at the time relevant work was done.

It has also been proven that Greece is overproducing several times the amount that is officially declared. There are indications that the excess product is simply being baptized as from other countries in the Mediterranean hence further aggravating the environmental degradation issue.

Politicians and even ministers are often stockholders in the fish farming industry. In fact the minister of tourism at the time of the signing of the 2011 ministerial decree was Pavlos Geroulanos one of the Aquaculture barons of Greece, at least the one that is apparent as the others may have been stockholders directly or indirectly also. Therefore the conflict of these with biodiversity protection and sustainable development and social justice is hardly surprising.

It is not difficult to extrapolate from this that with the existing legislation and government and EU backing the entirety of Greek land, aquatic and marine space is at present essentially donated to the aquaculture industry at least as far as they are concerned.

The Comparison with the Amazon

This situation with Greek seas is reminiscent of another one on land which is no other than the Amazon basin. Here also rapid conversion of high biodiversity natural ecosystems and blatant human rights violation is occurring under the influence of government and other international policies to areas of agriculture for export with the argument of the creation of income, jobs, development and the promotion of stability and security for the nation. It is also similar to the situation with shrimp and other forms of aquaculture in SE Asia.

In the struggle for social and environmental justice that is at present occurring and is expected to intensify as Greece sinks into financial depression, corruption and debt local people coalitions and relevant non government organizations can be expected to take the leading role as is so common in other parts of the world. The most worrying  fact but at the same time perhaps hopeful is that this situation is in the heart of the European Union which at its core is claiming to promote peace ,equality and prosperity as well as protection of the environment not only within its borders but also worldwide .Ultimately this is a situation which will carry consequences for the future of Greece and the region at least in the short term and a test as to whether the European union can provide something more than a trade and financial set of agreements and legal bodies to enforce them.

Photo 1: The growth of Aquaculture in Greece for the past 30 Years: Diagram  based on UNEP Data

Photo 2: Dying Posidonia Oceanica sea grass resulting from competition with algae in intensive aquaculture waters. Oxygen depletion as well as direct competition is responsible for their demise in this case. 

Photo 3: Protesting against aquaculture development in the inner Ionian Archipelago Marine Reserve in the core of the area in 2013. 

Photo 4:The 2011 ministerial decree map that declares part of the inner Ionian archipelago marine reserve and part of land as an area for the organized development of aquaculture. With the 2014 legislation all of the marine reserve and adjacent land is characterized as well. Map from relevant ministerial decree, legends added on map by Ted Karfakis

Photo 5: The Kalamos island pine forest whose entire area was declared as that for the development of industrial aquaculture. It is in the periphery of the inner Ionian archipelago marine protected area. Trees several centuries old will have to be cut and removed to make way if the aquaculture industry decides to do so and an important habitat for many species and a popular tourist attraction to the area could be lost

Photo 6:Map showing the reproductive sites for round Sardinella within the protected area(top) and the one showing the Natura 200 site(Yellow hatched grid) and the characterization of the area for industrial aquaculture superimposed(red hatched grid)

 Map of sardine reproductive sites from :SOMARAKIS, S., GANIAS, K., SIAPATIS, A., KOUTSIKOPOULOS, C., MACHIAS, A. and PAPACONSTANTINOU, C. (2006), Spawning habitat and daily egg production of sardine (Sardina pilchardus) in the eastern Mediterranean. Fisheries Oceanography, 15: 281–292. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2419.2005.00387.x

Photo 7: The different fish farms already present in the region along with registered production capacity. This may be seriously underestimated as units have been reported to overproduce what they are registered for ,ignoring relevant environmental legislation  from Ecological mapping and data quality assessment for the needs of ecosystem-based marine spatial management: case study Greek Ionian Sea and the adjacent gulfs (Medit. Mar. Sci., 13/2, 2012, 297-311)