Nature is an amazing creator. She sometimes creates stunningly beautiful landscapes. Koyashsky Lake, a natural Crimean miracle, plays an incredible color palette of the water surface. A fantastic lake has several unique factors at once. It is the most saline on the Crimean peninsula (the concentration of salt in its water is 350 g / l). In ancient times, a popular mineral was mined here. The lake is rich in healing mud.
Its waters change color depending on the season. With the onset of summer, the water mirror plays in richly colorful shades: from pale pink to intense red and bright orange. The richly colored waters of the lake contrast with the snow-white coast and the blue of the Black Sea, separated from the unusual reservoir by a hundred-meter-long strip stretching for three kilometers - Koyashsky embankment. The picturesque Koyashsky salt lake in Crimea against the background of the sea and the scorched steppe creates a fantastic picture.
Location of Koyashsky Lake
On the Kerch Peninsula, between Feodosia and Kerch, near the villages of Maryevka and Yakovenkovo, Koyashsky Lake was spread out. A unique reservoir is included in the territory of the Opuksky reserve, which spreads around the surroundings of Kerch. Pink Lake extends along the dry and nondescript steppes of Cimmeria, the earth and air of which are saturated with salts.
This picturesque lagoon was once a part of the Black Sea. The surf, rolling on land for two millennia, formed a unique bay, separating it from the main water area of a narrow strip of land.
Why is Koyashsky lake pink and red?
Pink-red and orange shades of the lake give the microscopic algae living in it, saturated with pigment of the corresponding color scheme. The characteristic coloring of the water is still given by the inhabitants of an unusual reservoir - artemia crustaceans. Beta-carotene algae not only stains water and salt crystals, they give them a delicate aroma of violets.
The mercilessly the sun burns, the more amazing the lake looks. During the summer season, the color of water becomes the most intense. With the evaporation of water, the salt dries. Its crystals settle on the surface of stones towering above the mirror of the reservoir. Crystallization is so fleeting that blocks of stone instantly turn into salt icebergs. The edges of the lake twitch snow-white edge, which, gradually expanding, captures the entire surface of the reservoir.
Water, retreating from the shores in the summer heat, turns the surrounding landscape into a fantastic sight. The coast of the pink reservoir becomes snow-white from crystallized salt. During this period, Koyashsky Lake (Crimea) resembles Martian landscapes. And salt crystals are carried by the wind across the Cimmerian steppe. Excessively salted and sun-scorched steppe lands become practically lifeless, unsuitable for cultivation.
Only in the spring, until mid-April, the expanses around the pink pond are covered with delicate greenery. In this tiny period, until the salinity in the lagoon rolls over, wild flowers and wild tulips bloom over the green carpet, and waterfowl nest. A little more, and the aquatic environment will become too aggressive for their normal life.
Description of the lake
The picturesque Koyashsky salt lake formed on the site of an extinct mud volcano is small. The pond covers an area of 500 hectares. In length it extends for four, and in width - for two and a few kilometers. The depth of the pink lake can be said to be insignificant; it barely reaches one meter.
The salinity of the lake is incredibly high - 350 ppm (350 g of salt dissolved in one liter of water). It is a colossal chemical laboratory created by nature. Here, in a reservoir with an aggressive environment, it is as if microorganisms, plants and animals are tested for survival. Different types of waders have adapted to life on the lake. For example, shiloklyuv, having chosen Koyashsky lake in the spring, live on it until the beginning of autumn.
Healing mud
The salt pond, Koyashskoe Lake, is an excellent healing source. Healing mud and brine, endowed with healing power, are concentrated in its hollow. By the healing properties, these muds are not inferior to Saki silt sediments. The bottom of the lake is covered with valuable mud with a volume of 1.7 million m 3.
Along the coast, which in the midst of summer turns into a salt desert, travelers gently wander to the water. It cannot be otherwise, because the hollow of the pond is nothing but a quiet mud volcano. A thick mud layer was deposited under the salt, in other places it was not only viscous, but also quick-moving.
