Tourist development in Katelios
No more turtles nesting here
Agia Barbara: sand and rocks
Erosion and ramps
New road just behind the beach
New port in Katelios: death of a quiet village
The future of Katelios is at stake
The village of Katelios has developed from a quiet fishing village to a tourist resort in the last 20 years. The pace of development has accelerated even further in the last few years, but most tourists still come because it's a quiet village compared to more developed resorts lacking character like Skala.
The beach has already been taken over by bars and tavernas. Most people therefore prefer the beach of Agia Barbara, separated from Katelios only by a small river. 'Cleaning' machines in the years have made the sand on both beaches so compact that it is now impossible for turtles to dig a nest here.
The beach of Agia Barbara has been the focus of attention recently. Local businesses and the municipality, not happy enough with the destruction of the original sand composition of the beach, have been trying to make it more 'attractive' and 'accessible'. How? First they removed rocks from the beach, because only a sandy beach is good value. Oops, the heavy machines further compacted the sand and made it extremely hard (see picture right: too rocky here, no nests for turtles). No problem, because according to experts from the National Centre for Marine Research, who visited the beach, this will have the opposite effect. Sand is now free to be taken by the sea in the winter. Erosion of the beach is already very evident, and rocks keep collapsing from the back. A very clear unsustainable situation.
Then they decided to open two ramps for better access to the beach, when it was already used without a problem by hundreds of tourists every day. The ramps promptly collapsed causing further accumulation of rocks on the beach and worsening the erosion problem (see picture right: turtle could not nest because of rocks on the ramp, and had to go back). They used some of the stones to make circles around trees at the back of the beach. Whether trees are better with or without cemented stones around them is debatable, but there is no question that this action, like all the rest, was done without any planning on this beach that is part of Mounda Bay, a Special Area of Conservation in the NATURA 2000 network.
Finally, they started eradicating the vegetation and depositing material to build a new road (see picture right). That's what we really need: a nice strip of cement behind the beach. It must be noticed that there is already a white road regularly used by cars to get to the beach. All their plans had to stop after the Katelios Group decided to quickly take the case to court. A few more days and we might now have a nice road and a shorter beach in Agia Barbara.
Another big case in Katelios is the new port. There are plans to build a huge port in Katelios, which would be of a size similar to the main port of the island in Sami. This big plan can certainly not be justified with the needs of the few remaining fishermen. We fear that, without explicit rules forbidding the access to big boats, the port might be used also by big boats, commercial and tourist ferries, as it happens now in Poros.
No matter what it will be for, a port of that size and the increased boat traffic would drastically change the nature of the place and devastate the area. Katelios would completely lose its character of quiet village, and certainly many of its current tourists. The impact of a port that size would be dramatic on the natural environment of the bay (see picture above), on the protected seagrass meadows of Posidonia oceanica and on the population of Loggerhead sea turtle Caretta caretta nesting in the area. To stop all this before it's too late, the Katelios Group has again had to take the case to court. Hopefully, thanks to the special protection acknowledged and granted by being included in the NATURA 2000 network, we will not witness the complete annihilation of the cultural and natural heritage of Katelios village and bay. The future of Katelios is at stake, and we hope everyone can at least understand this.