SAMOS — Early morning, the sun is still low at the southern port of Pythagoreio, on the island of Samos. Anchored at the dock, the Aegean Explorer is ready to set sail, after three weeks of heavy seas that have prevented any outings. Captain Thodoris Tsimpidis is at the helm as the crew and members come aboard the floating university he and his partner Anastasia Milou have created from scratch on this island in the eastern Aegean Sea, the arm of the Mediterranean between Greece and Asia Minor.
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Tsimpidis is the director of Archipelagos, a nongovernmental organization with the mission to protect and conserve the Mediterranean. He founded it in 1998, imparting a real turn in his life. Until then he had been a captain of quite different hulls: he had steered merchant ships, from container ships to oil tankers, crossing all the oceans. "And it was precisely what I saw at sea that prompted me to set up this project."
So, at 36, he decided to drop everything overnight and use his severance pay to buy a ship to do ecosystem monitoring and safeguarding in the Aegean, the sea of his childhood. He did it on the spur of the moment, driven almost by necessity, giving up the comforts of a well-established career.
In the beginning, he had few means. The boat was his home, his childhood friends his co-workers. He did everything in an artisanal way, trying to put his professionalism to work for a new goal. Then, in 2001, Milou, a young biologist from Athens who graduated from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom, arrived. She came for doctoral research and never left.
A love story in the Mediterranean
Tsimpidis and Milou fell in love and created a winning synergy in life and work. Together they cared for and nurtured Archipelagos, each contributing their own particular skills: field experience and daily contact with the sea for Tsimpidis; scientific knowledge and relationships with universities for Milou.
After 26 years, the organization now counts four ships, two operational bases (one on Samos, the other on the neighboring island of Lipsi), participates in research projects in partnership with a variety of universities, and attracts students and researchers from around the world to this corner of the Mediterranean.
Archipelagos sees industrial fishing as a curse.
"We have had visitors from Canada, New Zealand, India. About 600 people a year pass through here for shorter or longer periods, doing missions with our fleet or working at our bases," points out Milou, who has the role of scientific director.
The Aegean Explorer is the main ship: 21 meters long by six meters wide, six tons in weight, and the ability to accommodate up to 25 people; a water quality analysis laboratory, a data collection laboratory that uses sonar and a remotely operated vehicle (RoV), a sort of underwater drone that is capable of filming up to 1,000 meters deep. With these instruments they photograph the state of the seabed, observe the movements of cetaceans, record the impacts of fishing and other anthropogenic activities, and study changes in ecosystems as an effect of climate change.
Protecting the seabed
Today's mission aims to monitor the presence of Posidonia oceanica, commonly known as Neptune grass or Mediterranean tapeweed, a seagrass endemic to the Mediterranean Sea which is threatened by global warming and indiscriminate fishing.
"What is the main resource of our sea is becoming increasingly degraded. We are fighting for it to be protected and we are mapping the seabed, with the help of the technological tools we have, but also with the knowledge of fishermen." Milou recounts that Archipelagos members interview artisanal fishermen and draw real maps with their help, which they later validate with their instruments. "They are the guardians of the sea, they know it palm to palm and preserve its balance. Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer of them." Indeed, the trade is dying out, increasingly replaced by large fishing boats.
Archipelagos sees industrial fishing as a curse. "It is done by ships that come from Piraeus, the main port of Athens, or even further away. They have no respect for the balance of the ecosystem, because this is not their sea. They just extract resources from it, with the complicity of the political system."
Milou proudly recounts how they managed to obtain a revision of a seabed mapping done by the Hellenic Center for Marine Research, a state agency. "They presented data showing that Posidonia was completely absent in the eastern Aegean. We did our own surveys and convinced the European Union that our data was more accurate than the government's."
When it comes to mapping, what's at stake is the delineation of marine protected areas, where trawling will be banned by 2030. Precisely to avoid mixing with politics, Archipelagos does not accept public funds, either from the government in Athens or the European Union. It sustains itself through private donations and collaborative projects with universities.
Today the Posidonia meadows are threatened by the gradual warming of the waters and the arrival of alien species from the Suez Canal, including the dreaded rabbitfish, a herbivore that is desertifying the seabed. Bottom trawling also plays a big role as it rips the seagrass and impairs its further growth.
This is a process comparable to the disappearance of large primary forests, because Posidonia is a unique ecosystem for fish reproduction and can absorb huge amounts of carbon dioxide. But because it is underwater, it is less visible and receives less attention than deforestation on land.
Born to fight ignorance
As we sail, a sonar, connected to a screen, examines the seabed. "This device records the acoustic wave of the sea and is able to signal whether there are coralligenous groups, Posidonia or schools of fish," explains Andrea Sozzi, a student from Turin who is doing a doctoral thesis on this very thing. "Then if we see something particularly interesting, we use RoV."
He doesn't even have time to say it that Tsimpidis picks up the instrument, goes aft and throws it into the water. He then stations himself at the console. The RoV reports the temperature, unusually high for the winter season: 20.5 degrees. "At least two degrees more than normal," the captain says, shaking his head.
Tsimpidis has seen the Mediterranean turn more and more into a dumping ground.
After about a minute, images come in of the seabed, which is 40 meters deep here. The rocks are barren, completely devoid of vegetation. No trace of Posidonia. Not a fish can be seen on the screen. Then an octopus appears, beginning to interact with the RoV. Maneuvering at the console, Tsimpidis chases after it. He almost seems to be enjoying himself.
Guiding the remote vehicle and looking at the seafloor, the captain suddenly becomes chatty.
"The Aegean Sea contains the last remaining large marine forests, as well as large and significant coral red algae and impressively beautiful ecosystems that are about 8,000 years old. All these things we are destroying with our unwise actions," he says a bit disheartened.
In the nearly 50 years he has been sailing, Tsimpidis has seen the Mediterranean turn more and more into a dumping ground, poisoned by the residues of industrial and agricultural production, choked by plastic, red-hot because of climate change. And raped by neglect and ignorance.
"Archipelagos was born for this: to fight ignorance," he says, still looking at the screen as the octopus plays solitarily among the bare rocks. "Because what is happening is very serious. We cannot hand our children a sea devoid of life."
