Mediterranean

Greece’s mussel harvest wiped out by warming seas

When Anastasios Zakalkas pulled up the ropes of his mussel farm in the Aegean Sea last month, the devastation was clear: the lines were not heaving with molluscs as they should be at harvest time but were instead filled with cracked, empty shells. It is the second time in three years that record sea temperatures have hit the mussel harvest in northern Greece, where farmers said they saw a 90% drop in the 2024 catch. Next year will be a dud too, Zakalkas said, because all the seed for the coming...

September 10, 2024 5:02 PM

Italy oyster farmers dream of pearls from warming Mediterranean

Pearls may soon be cultivated in European seas for the first time ever, as Italian oyster farmers seek to exploit an unexpected opportunity offered by the rapidly warming Mediterranean. In late 2023, the first specimens of Pinctada radiata, a pearl oyster native to the Red Sea, were spotted in the Gulf of Poets, a popular tourist area around 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Genoa on Italy's north-western coast. Less than a year later, they are proliferating in what have always been some of the M...