Photo: User:Vmenkov · CC BY-SA 3.0
Photo: Rob Bowker · CC BY 2.0
Lake Pomorie is the northernmost of the coastal Burgas lakes, right next to the Black Sea and the town of Pomorie. It is elongated in shape and is separated from the sea by a narrow sand spit and an artificial dike, and its water is ultrasaline. Sea salt is obtained from the northern part of the lake and curative mud from the southern part. It has been a protected area since 2001, lies on the Via Pontica bird migration route, and since the 2010s thousands of greater flamingos have wintered there.
History
Salt has been made here since antiquity, and the pans once supplied Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire. The Salt Museum, the only one of its kind in Bulgaria, covers about 2,000 years of solar salt production.
Nature
Avocets, black-winged stilts, little terns and Kentish plovers nest on the islands of the salt pans. Dunlin, curlew sandpipers, ruffs and plovers pass in large numbers in spring and autumn, and white-headed ducks and thousands of flamingos spend the winter. Reed beds hold marsh harriers, bitterns and purple herons. The black mud from the lake floor forms extremely slowly, about 1 cm in 100 years, and is found only here and at Atanasovsko Lake.
Gallery
Visit
Getting there
Nearest settlement: Pomorie
Swimming
No reliable information
Tips
The lake lies 2 km north of Pomorie and about 20–25 km from Burgas, with regular buses. The Salt Museum is behind the town stadium on the lake bank, next to the visitor centre, which has an interactive exhibition and optical equipment for watching birds. A road and footpath run along the spit between the lake and the sea, with viewpoints over the salt pans, at their best on spring and autumn migration.
The northern part is used for salt and the southern for mud, and mud treatment is offered in town at the Mud Therapy Institute. Hotels, guesthouses and restaurants are in Pomorie, and Atanasovsko Lake, Poda and Mandra are easy to combine. See the Pomorie Lake Protected Area page for more.
Nearby lakes
Show on mapPhoto: User:Vmenkov · CC BY-SA 3.0
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Sources & data
- Bulgaria's 2022 Water Framework Directive reporting to the EEA: lake (LW) and transitional (TW) water bodies, field cArea, European Environment Agency (WISE WFD), reported by Bulgaria, 2022
- OpenStreetMap: Поморийско езеро (way 26124402), OpenStreetMap contributors
- English Wikipedia: Lake Pomorie, Wikimedia Foundation
- Wikidata: Lake Pomorie (Q1503623), Wikimedia Foundation
- Salt Museum, Pomorie, Visit Bulgaria
- Pomorie Wetland Complex, International Parks
- Lake Pomorie, Ramsar site, Ramsar Sites Information Service
- Pomorie Lake, Visit Bulgaria