Dead fish blanket Greek port Volos after flooding

In early September last year, Storm Daniel barreled into this Mediterranean nation and its islands, killing at least 17 people and destroying swathes of crops, mostly cotton, of which Greece is by far the largest producer in the European Union.

Farmland was flooded in the breadbasket of the Thessaly Plain, to the north of Volos. And the rains also swelled Lake Karla, a nearby body of water that was deliberately reduced in size in the 1960s to increase farmland and combat Malaria.

As the lake waters receded back to normal in the year since, freshwater fish have been forced downstream and into the saltwater of the Pagasetic Gulf at Volos, likely killing them in their hundreds of thousands, officials said this week.

The cleanup is well underway, and most fish have now been removed by trawlers dragging nets, or excavators perched into the shore, dumped in the back of trucks.

Officials put the number of fish in the hundreds of thousands. Looking out over the port Thursday noon local time (5 a.m. ET), Voulgaris, the restaurant owner, estimated that 90% of these had been cleared up.

But a political fight remains — not to mention questions over Greece’s future as a holiday haven as it is increasingly besieged by extreme weather.

Volos mayor Achilleas Beos has accused the central government of failing to put nets at the mouth of the river, which he said would have averted this ecological and economic catastrophe.

“They didn’t do the obvious, to put a protective net,” he said during an animated news conference Wednesday.

He said that rotting fish could create an environmental disaster for other species in the area.

NBC News has requested comment from the Greek environment ministry by phone and email.