Qualla: Alonnisos Marine Park

Alonnisos Marine Park: Introduction

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Icarus83 assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. It started with a documentary maker who noticed what no one else had bothered to measure. In 1976 the German zoologist Thomas Schultze-Westrum ran a series of exploratory missions through the deserted islands northeast of Alonnisos and concluded that this stretch of the Aegean held ecological value found almost nowhere else in the Mediterranean. He proposed that it be protected. Sixteen years later, on May 16, 1992, Greece signed his idea into law. The National Marine Park of Alonnisos Northern Sporades became the first marine park in the country and remains the largest marine protected area in the Mediterranean, roughly 2,260 square kilometers of sea, islands, and rock.

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Icarus83 assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Alonnisos Marine Park: The Rarest Seal Alive

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vasilis drosakis, CC BY-SA 4.0. The park exists, above all, for one animal. The Mediterranean monk seal, Monachus monachus, is among the rarest marine mammals on the planet, with only an estimated 440 to 540 mature individuals left in the world. It hauls out and pups in sea caves along steep limestone coasts, e...

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Image: Vasilis drosakis | CC BY-SA 4.0

Alonnisos Marine Park: When the Fishermen Said Yes

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Elenortheo, CC BY-SA 4.0. A marine park is only as strong as the people who fish its waters allow it to be. The most remarkable moment in the park's founding was not the presidential decree but a quieter agreement that came before it. After consultation, the fishermen of Alonnisos accepted the idea of a r...

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Image: Elenortheo | CC BY-SA 4.0

Alonnisos Marine Park: Two Zones, One Sanctuary

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Handrian, CC BY-SA 3.0. The park divides into two very different worlds. Zone A, the strict core covering some 1,587 square kilometers, encloses the remote islands. Around Piperi, no boat may even approach within three nautical miles; only licensed scientists and park staff may enter, and professional a...

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Image: Handrian | CC BY-SA 3.0

Alonnisos Marine Park: Life on the Edge of Europe

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Elenortheo, CC BY-SA 4.0. Beyond the seal, the park teems. Its waters hold roughly 300 species of fish and meadows of Posidonia seagrass, the slow-growing underwater plant that anchors the whole ecosystem. Up to 80 species of bird pass through or nest among the cliffs, including Eleonora's falcon and the ...

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Image: Elenortheo | CC BY-SA 4.0