Messolonghi Lagoon, Greece – Yiannis Theodoropoulos spends most of his time suspended half a metre above water.
The 52-year-old fisherman, his 17-year-old son Alexis, and a employed hand, Thomas, stay in a wood shack on stilts in the midst of the Messolonghi Lagoon, in southwest Greece.
Early every morning, Thomas collects nets put out the night time earlier than and prises fish out of them, whereas Yiannis and Alexis take shallow-bottomed boats to see what they’ve caught of their divari – a half-acre-sized enclosure of wood poles fitted with netting that traps fish.
It’s an ingenious methodology carried out for hundreds of years in Greece’s lagoons. Because the tide is available in, fish swim in opposition to it to eat incoming vitamins, and fishermen open up gates on the divari’s landward aspect to catch them. When the tide reverses, they open gates on the seaward aspect. Theodoropoulos fears that local weather change now threatens this lifestyle.
“This yr all of the fish have been held again,” he says. “I feel it could be due to the warmth, as a result of there hadn’t been a heatwave like this yr’s for a few years … not since 1997, and the fish have been held again then, too.”
Greece suffered a collection of unprecedented heatwaves final summer time, outlined as days when the temperature soars above 35 levels Celsius (95 levels Fahrenheit).
“This heatwave was the longest that ever struck our nation,” geophysicist Christos Zerefos instructed Al Jazeera. The 1997 heatwave Theodoropoulos remembers doesn’t even rank as one of many worst. “In 1987 it lasted 5 days. In 2007 it was six days. And now 11 days. It retains on growing,” Zerefos says.
The Committee for the Research of the Results of Local weather Change, which Zerefos leads, predicted in 2011 that Greece will expertise 35-40 extra days of heatwaves every year by the top of the century.
Agriculture and fishing will undergo greater than different sectors, the committee’s report discovered. In a no-action state of affairs, annual gross home product (GDP) will drop by 2 % in 2050 and by 6 % in 2100, amounting to an general price of 701 billion euros ($814bn) in 2008 costs – three and a half occasions the nation’s GDP.
Knowledge compiled for this report by the Athens Observatory affirm that temperatures are already rising. The observatory’s weather-monitoring station in Agrinio, 30km (19 miles) north of Mesolonghi, discovered that within the final 30 years common annual temperatures have risen practically 2C (3.6F) to simply beneath 22C (71.6F).
The impression of local weather change is already obvious on Theodoropoulos’s livelihood. He rents the hut and divari from the native prefecture for 12,000 euros ($14,000) a yr. This yr enterprise was so dangerous he needed to promote a ship to assist pay the lease.
“I offered the boat for two,800 euros [$3,235],” he says. “It price me greater than 9,000 euros ($10,400) to construct. However I used to be pressured to.”
The prefecture is in concept accountable for the maintenance of the hut as a part of the rental settlement, however in follow, it doesn’t hassle, says Theodoropoulos. Throughout October, Greece skilled two waves of storms that severely weakened the hut. On one aspect, its wraparound deck has collapsed.
“I went to the prefecture and instructed them in regards to the harm finished by the final storm, they usually stated, ‘repair it your self’. How? Do I’ve that a lot cash?” says Theodoropoulos, who already pays 5,000 euros ($5,800) a yr to resume the wood poles of the divari. “These decks are all rotten beneath. If we now have one other bout of dangerous climate, we’ll all float away.”
The altering local weather bodes ailing not just for the numbers of fish that enter the lagoon, but in addition for its waters, that are the important thing to its biodiversity.
Brackish lagoons akin to these of Mesolongi and neighbouring Aitoliko are shaped by candy river water mingling with seawater within the river delta. The lagoons sit between the deltas of the Acheloos and Evinos rivers.
The Zerefos Committee’s worst-case state of affairs predicts that rainfall will diminish by 17 % throughout Greece by the top of the century, weakening rivers. This has not but been borne out by rainfall measurements.
The Athens Observatory’s readings present rising rainfall on the Agrinio station for the previous 30 years, however Kostas Lagouvardos, analysis director on the observatory, warns that rainfall causes are advanced and might change unexpectedly.
A 2009 examine commissioned by the Mesolonghi-Aitoliko Lagoon Administration Authority predicts that candy water getting into the lagoons from the Acheloos and Evinos will fall by 30 % by mid-century, making the water much less brackish and extra saline.
Three hydroelectric dams on the decrease reaches of the Acheloos River additionally trigger hurt, says the authority’s coordinator Yiannis Selimas.
That’s as a result of the Acheloos and Evinos carry silt and sand downstream, which is deposited within the type of sandbars that enclose and defend the lagoons’ delicate water steadiness.
“The sandbar islands are step by step eroding, partly due to local weather change, partly as a result of silt from the Acheloos River is being held again within the dams,” Selimas tells Al Jazeera.
“To protect them we should have extra silt. It may occur artificially, however that requires specialised examine, and we’d prefer it to occur naturally because it has finished for 1000’s of years.”
Extra alarmingly, rising sea ranges from melting Arctic ice might eradicate these sandbars altogether, turning the lagoons into open sea.
“A examine finished for us by the Nationwide Observatory suggests coastal areas will flood, and the river deltas of the Acheloos and Evinos look like particularly weak,” says Selimas.
“We don’t need the lagoons to show into seawater, as a result of brackish water has excessive biodiversity. We’re at risk of shedding species of fish, mammals, even birds.”
A 2017 examine by the European Fee’s Joint Analysis Centre of scientists estimated that sea ranges will rise by 57-81cm (22.4-31.9 inches) round Europe by 2100.
The 2009 examine explains what that may imply for the low elevation of the Messolonghi space, which hosts farming on the deltas’ wealthy alluvial plains, and the place 80 % of Greece’s salt extraction takes place.
“If sea ranges rise 50cm [19.7 inches], 64 hectares [158 acres] can be flooded by seawater. If the more severe state of affairs of a 100cm [39.4 inches] rise is realised, the estimate is that roughly 165 hectares [408 acres] will flood, of which 132 hectares [326 acres] is inhabited and 33 hectares [81.5 acres] is farmland,” the report says.
As devastating because the implications are for the economic system, they prolong additional.
“A wholesome forest, a wholesome wetland, soak up CO2, and assist mitigate local weather change-related excessive climate occasions, akin to floods,” Dimitris Ibrahim of the World Vast Fund for Nature tells Al Jazeera.
Ibrahim, who heads the WWF’s advocacy on local weather and power points in Greece, says the nation is already seeing the consequences of local weather change.
“The summer time interval is growing, that means extra drought and heatwaves – in reality, we’re seeing the primary heatwaves in Could now – which scientists warned we’d … There can be rising sea ranges and elevated excessive climate phenomena.”
Theodoropoulos feeds a household of 14 with the bream and mullet he catches, and he pays two staff. He has anointed the 17-year-old Alexis to succeed him in feeding the household. A lifetime of residing on the water and hoisting nets has given him again ache.
“I’ve my son. In one other 10 years or so I’m going to relaxation. What can I do?” he says.
He doesn’t seem to have contemplated how Alexis will handle in a whole collapse of the setting that allowed his technology to make a residing.