ATHENS – Greece’s Supreme Court prosecutor Georgia Adelini ordered an initial examination over why a dam leading from Lake Karla wasn’t closed, letting freshwater fish reach the port of Volos, killed by saltwater and rotting away.

Some 100 tons were on the beach, just meters away from some restaurants and fish taverns losing customers at the height of the summer tourism season because the stench was unbearable and gagging.

The incident was said caused by the aftermath of deadly 2023 floods inland and was also blamed on climate change but Volos Mayor Achilleos Beos said someone should be held responsible for not preventing the fish from getting to his port.

Adelini’s order stated: “We request that an urgent preliminary investigation be conducted to investigate, among other things, whether the sluice gate leading to the tunnel, which is the sole outlet for the waters of the entire Larissa-Karla plain into Pagasitikos, should have been open. Further investigation should determine who made the decision to irrigate the aforementioned plain.”

A massive clean up was underway during another day of searing heat that accelerated the decay and stink with trawlers and heavy equipment brought in to try to clear the fish away and save something of the rest of summer.

TV images, The New York Times reported, showed “fishing boats trawling through a silvery blanket of dead fish that formed off the port earlier,” as  this week, passers-by snapped photographs of the gruesome scene on their cellphones.

“Greek officials traded accusations over the disaster as seafront businesses dependent on tourism said they have seen their revenues slashed by 80 percent since the freshwater fish showed up,” the report said of another blame game.

Lake Karla, a European Union-protected wetland, which saw its water levels rise sharply after a major storm that caused widespread flooding in central Greece last fall, the report added, not indicating why it took a year for the fish to hit Volos.

The storm had flooded some 50,000 acres of land around Lake Karla, Pantelis Sidiropoulos, an Assistant Professor of Rural and Surveying Engineering at Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, told the paper.

In a phone interview he said that extreme temperatures caused much of that water to evaporate, leaving masses of fish in dwindling waters with inadequate oxygen and poisoned by toxins.

“The fish are basically victims of climate change,” he said, noting that his colleagues had seen dead fish in the farmland next to Lake Karla earlier. “The authorities had months to remove the fish from the area,” he added. “They’ve been sitting in stagnant waters for a long time.”

Beo said he had warned of the potential effect of flooding of agricultural plains adjacent to Lake Karla after the 2023 storm and flooding of agricultural planes. He described the fish disaster as an “environmental crime.”

Dimitrios Iakovakis, who owns one of the largest fish tavernas on the Volos seafront, said he had lost most of his customers. “It’s deserted,” he said, and that his revenues fell from 200 euros of his restaurant, noting that his revenues had plunged to 200 euros ($222) a day, or $210, from 5,000 euros, about $5,542.

“The smell is unbearable,” he added, noting that in his 25 years of running the taverna, he had never seen anything like it. “A sea of rotting fish five meters from our tables. Who could have imagined it?”