Lake Kugurlui

In the Odessa region of Ukraine, Lake Kugurlui, located between the country's largest lake Yalpug and the Danube, on the border with Romania, lives to the fullest. Its melodious name means "shell" in Turkic, which accurately conveys its shape. Slightly flattened from the north and south, the lake from space really looks like an oval clam shell.

The length is about 20 km.
The width is about 10 km.
The area is approximately 82 km2.
Lake Kugurlui is a floodplain and belongs to the group of Ukrainian Danube lakes formed from the historical tributaries of this great European river. It still receives more than half of its annual tide in the spring, when the Danube generously shares its waters with the nearest lakes through specially constructed locks. Precipitation is the second most important source of Kugurlui renewal, accounting for almost a third of all income. And finally, another donor is Yalpug Lake, the largest freshwater reservoir in the country. It is located north of Kugurlui and is separated from it by a causeway. However, due to the fact that the waters of Yalpug are polluted by the drains of the river of the same name, their communication with Kugurlui is extremely undesirable for the latter.

Despite its modest size compared to its northern "brother" Yalpug, Lake Kugurlui is no less valuable to humanity. A unique biocenosis has formed in it, and unlike many other lakes in the region, Kugurlui is included in the international list of the Ramsar Convention for the Protection of Wetlands. Partly due to the curly-haired pelican living in the southeast of the lake, the bird is quite large and listed in the Red Book as a vulnerable species. In addition to the pelican, up to 250 species of birds nest here. Fortunately, the conditions for young birds to take wing here are excellent. The shallow waters are rich in a variety of fish: the coastal part of the reservoir is completely overgrown with reeds and cattails, in the thickets of which carp, walleye, pike and, of course, crayfish feel great.

You can take a fascinating trip on a small boat along the Kugurloy. The lake is interesting because in some places there is practically no shore: the water goes far into willow and reed thickets. Sailing through the small channels, you will feel like you are in a real Ukrainian jungle filled with rich vegetation. Here you can admire the main decoration of the Kugurlui — water lilies, the flowers of which reach a diameter of fifteen centimeters.

The Danube Delta is a unique ecosystem, which, unfortunately, has begun to experience serious environmental problems with the development of civilization. The main threat to Kugurlui, as well as to the rest of the region's lakes, is human interference in the water cycle.

There were heroic years in the history of the lake. In 1939-1941, the Danube Military Flotilla was stationed on a hundred square kilometers of the lake surface. Now all the surrounding lands are occupied for the cultivation of fodder crops. Agricultural land is even located on a specially created polder, an embankment separating the lake from the Danube. People built a system of locks and dams to regulate the water level in the region's lakes and actually cut them off from the main donor, a deep river. Kugurlui was also separated from the neighboring Yalpuga Lake. After the environmental disaster of 1988, when Kugurlui received water poisoned with chemicals from Yalpug and there was a mass death of fish, the authorities had to cover the gateway between the lakes. This is a necessary measure to save the lake from the polluted waters of an adjacent reservoir, but it is also the reason for insufficient irrigation of the Kugurlui.

Thus, there are serious circumstances that are causing the Ukrainian Danube lakes, including the Kugurlui, to gradually become swampy and give way to land. International experts who conducted an on-site inspection at the lake determined that this trend is unlikely to change in the coming years, however, in order to restore the unique biocenosis, regional authorities will need to make every effort to minimize the human factor in establishing the water balance.