Turquoise Lake (Jezioro Turkusowe)

Turquoise Lake (Jezioro Turkusowe) lies in Wolin National Park, south of Wapnica in Międzyzdroje municipality. It covers 6.74 ha and is 21.2 m deep, and the water has a bluish-green colour, from which it took its name. The reservoir occupies the pit of a former chalk mine.

Where the lake came from

Until the middle of the 20th century chalk was extracted here for the cement works of Johannes Quistorp in nearby Lubin, about half a kilometre to the west. Quistorp began building the plant in 1855 on the shore of Lake Wicko Wielkie, because good chalk deposits lay nearby. The most important was a large mass, a glacial raft, which the ice sheet tore from the bed of an ancient sea and deposited among sands and gravels as a rise now called Piaskowa Góra. Many years of extraction removed a considerable part of this hill and reached a dozen or so metres below sea level.

The cement works stopped in March 1945, as the front approached. After Soviet troops entered, the equipment of the mine and the plant was dismantled and taken away. The unattended pit began to fill with subsurface water, but in 1948 the Polish authorities resumed extraction: the water was pumped out, machinery was brought in and the mine worked until 1954. Then, because the deposit was running out and the pit was growing deeper, extraction ended. The reservoir filled again, this time slowly, and around 1960 the water level reached that of the Szczecin Lagoon. Today the water surface lies 2.6 m above sea level, so the bed forms a cryptodepression reaching 18.6 m below sea level.

Where the turquoise colour comes from

According to the Wikipedia entry the colour results from the scattering of sunlight in clear water and from reflections off the white, chalky bed on which calcium carbonate compounds lie. The shade therefore changes with the lighting and the time of day, and there is no guarantee that it will look the same on a particular visit.

Viewpoint and trail

On the high southern shore rises the summit of Piaskowa Góra, a viewpoint over the lake, Wapnica and the Lubin-Wapnica Hills. Beside the lake runs the blue Baltic Sea and Szczecin Lagoon Trail, which links Międzyzdroje with Wolin. The sources list Turquoise Lake among the tourist sites of Wolin National Park.

Nearby grows the 400-year-old Prastary Oak, a natural monument, whose circumference in 2012 was 705 cm. In 2015 the tree was set on fire by vandals.

Practical information

• Location: south of Wapnica, within Wolin National Park, Międzyzdroje municipality, Kamień County.
• On site: a lake with a high bank on the south side and a viewpoint on Piaskowa Góra, and a blue hiking trail.
• The rules for moving around the park and any restrictions are given by Wolin National Park, which is also the place to check current information before your visit.
• In the area is the Natural History Museum of Wolin National Park.