Divers cleaning up seabed off Greece's Alonissos raise alarm over marine pollution

By Stelios Misinas

ALONISSOS, Greece (Reuters) -Off the Greek island of Alonissos in the eastern Aegean Sea, volunteer divers grab decaying plastic bottles, a tyre and a rusted anchor chain from the seabed and place them in a trash bag as part of an EU-funded cleanup to protect marine life.

The items recovered off Alonissos - a favourite tourist spot for its green-blue waters, and Europe's largest protected marine park - represent just a tiny part of the tens of thousands of tons of waste that litter the Mediterranean Sea every year.

The park, set up off Alonissos in the early 1990s, is home to one of the world's last remaining colonies of the Monk seal, and a refuge for over 300 fish species, dolphins and sea turtles. 

Its existence has made both locals and tourists increasingly aware of the risks of marine pollution, said Theodora Francis, 31, one of the divers who joined the two-day initiative.

"We visited five, four areas to check whether we find rubbish in those areas," Francis said. "In most of those areas we didn't... but in some areas we did." She said the main port of Votsi, where most tourism and fishing occurs, was the site of most litter.

To protect its coastal biodiversity, Greece has promised to create another two marine parks in the Aegean and the Ionian Sea in the west, part of 21 initiatives worth 780 million euros ($887.5 million).

It has legislated the expansion of marine protected areas to 30% of its territorial waters by 2030, and has submitted plans to the EU setting out how it will organise fishing, tourism and offshore energy.

"People all over the globe should know that we have the strength to change everything. We really believe in the individual responsibility of people, we invest in this," said George Sarelakos, 46, president of the Greece-based agency which organised the cleanup, Aegean Rebreath. 

For Francis, Alonissos can be a model for the protection of the seas.

"If every island had the same interest in taking care of their environment, we would have the Alonissos situation in many more islands."

($1 = 0.8789 euros)

(Reporting by Stelios Misinas, Writing by Angeliki Koutantou, Editing by Jan Harvey)