Guide
Sera Lake lies within the Akçaabat district of Trabzon, in the Derecik valley between the municipalities of Yıldızlı and Derecik. It is a landslide barrier lake and takes its name from Sera, the old name of Yıldızlı.
The lake formed on Tuesday 21 February 1950, when heavy rain brought great masses of rock down from the sides of the valley and blocked its floor. Some of the pieces that broke away were so large that the places they came from can still be made out today, and their fall left deep drops in the valley; a small local earthquake was felt on the day it happened. The mass that came off the mountain measured thirty metres across, 650 metres long and 130 metres high, some fifteen million cubic metres in all. The lake took its full form within eighteen days, and the people of the area watched a lake come into being before their eyes. Soldiers spent a long time clearing the collapsed slopes and the spoil on the valley floor.
As the rising water wore away the outlet through the barrier, the lake shrank. It was four kilometres long when it first formed and has since lost half that, with the depth falling by two metres.
Large landslides across the Eastern Black Sea in 1990 made great changes here, and from that time on soil eroded and then carried down from the upper part of the valley has put the lake at risk. The soil gathering on the bed has meant that many people who fell into the water were unable to get out of it and lost their lives. The speed at which the lake is filling with soil, and the rubbish washed down from the upper reaches of the stream after heavy rain, prompted the authorities to act: two check dams were built upstream and the silted parts of the lake began to be cleared. That work brought objections of its own, because an area holding hundreds of trees was destroyed to make picnic grounds, and a number of officials opposed the scheme on the grounds that the lake would end up an artificial one. The work of putting the lake right is still going on.
The water is fresh and holds carp, barbel and stream fish. Freshwater crayfish, introduced later, have multiplied a great deal. Three hundred metres below the outlet stands a small hydroelectric plant of 1.2 megawatts, producing 5.64 gigawatt hours a year.
Sera is one of the places visitors come to in Trabzon province, and the ground around it suits eco-tourism and outdoor recreation — walking, camping and taking in the view.
- Designated
- 24.04.2010
Entry fee
- Black Sea group 2 · category 1 · Per person
- 65 ₺
