As of: February 10, 2024, 7:25 p.m
By: Johannes Welte
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Past idyll: The beach in Smuggler's Bay before the winter storms.
© IMAGO/xevannovostrox
Violent winter storms have destroyed the famous shipwreck in Smugglers' Bay on the Greek island of Zakynthos.
An expert predicts the end of the entire dream beach.
Zakynthos - It's a picturesque sight: Surrounded by steep rocky cliffs, a mysterious shipwreck lies on a white beach on the azure sea in Greece.
One and a half million holidaymakers visit Navagio Beach in Smugglers' Bay on the Greek island of Zakynthos in the Ionian Sea west of the mainland every year.
Meter-high waves have torn the famous Zakynthos shipwreck in two
Influencers and tourists who posted photos of the beach with probably the most popular photo motif in Greece must be strong: the wreck of the coaster
Panagiotis,
which was destroyed in 1980
The ship, which ran aground off the island and was abandoned by its crew, broke up in a severe winter storm in January.
Meter-high waves had hit the hull, which had been corroded by salt water, and created a breach.
But that's not all: the rubble of the wreck has sunk a good deal deeper into sand.
Local skippers discovered the broken wreckage, and pictures of the wreckage spread quickly on social networks: “Damn!
What a catastrophe!,” writes an Italian woman in her post, sharing photos from her trip when she was able to admire the wreck in one piece in the summer.
“Unfortunately this didn’t happen out of the blue, Mother Nature waits for no one!” commented another user.
There is a sense of disaster on the Greek holiday island of Zakynthos
There is a sense of disaster on site, after all, Smugglers' Bay is the second most visited attraction in Greece after the Acropolis and is therefore a major tourist magnet for the island.
A few days ago, Zakynthos Mayor Giorgos Stasinopoulos called for the management of the coast around Navagio Bay to be transferred from the Ministry of Tourism to the Zakynthos Municipality.
“We all see the boat disappear.
It is a shame that such a much-photographed place, visited by people from all over the world and which is the second most visited place in Greece, is at the mercy of God,” Stasinopoulos said in an interview with Greek TV channel
ERT
.
According to him, so far there is no authority responsible for the shipwreck to save it.
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“Keep in mind that tourists may stop coming if there will be no ship for them to see,” the mayor said.
Stasinopoulos demands that the remains of the ship be preserved.
He doesn't reveal how this is supposed to work.
Greek professor gives gloomy forecast for famous Navagio beach on holiday island
If you believe the words of Professor Efthymios Lekkas, President of Geology and Environment at the Kapodistrias University in Athens, the entire beach will disappear with the wreck.
“The ship created an artificial dam that prevented the washed-up sand from being washed away,” he explains.
After the shipwreck in 1980, the beach was created within four to five years.
Lekkas: “If the ship disappears now, the area will return to the state it was before and there will be no beach left.”
Lekkas recommends that the beach be closed to the public for safety reasons.
Navagio Beach and the shipwreck were previously temporarily closed to visitors in 2018 after a cliff collapsed following a magnitude 6.8 earthquake.
In September 2022, a landslide occurred in the bay following a magnitude 5.4 earthquake.
Many excursion boats still headed to the bay.
In fact, current videos show that the section of beach has already narrowed significantly, the water is sloshing all the way to the wreck and has already buried most of the ship under a lot of sand.
The Zakynthos shipwreck became a world-famous photo motif on Navagio Beach
There are many stories about the “Panagiotis” accident.
She is said to have been on her way from Turkey to Italy with a load of smuggled cigarettes on behalf of the mafia when the engine failed off Zakynthos and the rudderless ship was driven onto the beach.
Another version says that on October 2, 1980, the captain Charalambos Kompothekras-Kotsoros was forced to beach the “Panagiotis” in the bay due to an engine failure.
Locals are said to have looted some of the ship's cargo and equipment.
The captain is said to have alerted the authorities, and 29 locals were later convicted of looting the wreck.
Greece's beaches have now become a contested area: In the summer, locals on the Aegean island of Paros demonstrated against the parasol mafia that was occupying public beaches.
There was a devastating forest fire on the island of Rhodes, and hoteliers are trying to win back guests with free vacations.
And off the island of Santorini, researchers recently discovered evidence of a huge prehistoric volcanic eruption.