Article by Dimosthenis Seitaridis
Cover photo by George Tzimagiorgis
Edited by Harrys Pourouzidis
The first film in Theo Angelopoulos’s unfinished Trilogy of Modern Greece became a source of inspiration for many photographers, urging them to seek out and capture, through their lenses, a place deeply marked by both nature and history.
A local three-day holiday was responsible for us to leave our own mark and thus we loaded our bags and camera heading a little farther north. Our ranks were strengthened with two exceptional photographer guests, Stavros Toumanidis and Lina Kontozoglou.
The first film in Theo Angelopoulos’s unfinished Trilogy of Modern Greece became a source of inspiration for many photographers, urging them to seek out and capture, through their lenses, a place deeply marked by both nature and history.
A local three-day holiday was responsible for us to leave our own mark and thus we loaded our bags and camera heading a little farther north. Our ranks were strengthened with two exceptional photographer guests, Stavros Toumanidis and Lina Kontozoglou.
“Prasiada” was its first name. It was once a relatively shallow lake, with marshes and stagnant waters, shaped by the Strymon Rivers whims. Dense forests of pine, oak, and beech covered the surrounding mountains and hills, where deer, bears, lynx, and lions once lived. According to historians, lions attacked Xerxes’ camels when the Persian army crossed the Strymon.
Some among us remembered the lake from previous visits, in different seasons. Nature may change, but beauty remains.
“Prasiada” was its first name. It was once a relatively shallow lake, with marshes and stagnant waters, shaped by the Strymon Rivers whims. Dense forests of pine, oak, and beech covered the surrounding mountains and hills, where deer, bears, lynx, and lions once lived. According to historians, lions attacked Xerxes’ camels when the Persian army crossed the Strymon. Some among us remembered the lake from previous visits, in different seasons. Nature may change, but beauty remains.
A fertile place, rich in fish and game, Prasiada offered its gifts generously to the people who lived around it. Thracians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Bulgarians, Serbs, and Turks settled on its shores, but they paid a heavy price. The force of the uncontrolled Strymon River destroyed crops and settlements, while malaria reaped human lives.
The last to pay a heavy tribute in blood were the refugees of the Asia Minor Catastrophe. Nearly 90,000 of them settled in the wider region, struggling to survive under harsh conditions. As a result, 20 percent of the refugees died within a short period of time. A solution had to be found urgently. In 1928, the Greek government commissioned the American company John Monks–Ulen & Co. to carry out sanitation and flood-control works.
In 1932, the first dam was completed beside the village of Lithotopos, creating the artificial reservoir of Lake Kerkini while, at the same time, draining Lake Achinos and the marshlands of the plain. Because the river carried and deposited large quantities of sediment into the lake, it soon became necessary to build a new, higher dam and to raise and extend the embankments.
These works were completed in 1982, resulting in the creation of Lake Kerkini as we know it today. The lake is pear-shaped, with the dam near Lithotopos forming its narrow end. Its maximum length is about 15 kilometres, its maximum width 8.5 kilometres, while its depth ranges from 1 to 10 metres. Its surface area changes with the seasons, ranging from 55 to 73 square kilometres.
Today, Kerkini is a precious ecosystem with multiple benefits for the people of the region. It plays a vital role in flood protection, holding back the waters of the Strymon and preventing floods in the lower part of the Serres plain. It also provides irrigation water for much of the Serres regional unit, an area with a strong agricultural character and among the most productive in the country.
The lake is one of the richest in fish in the Balkans — something its winged inhabitants know very well. From an ornithological point of view, it is one of the richest wetlands in Greece, with more than 300 bird species, and it is the most important wintering and migration site for the Dalmatian pelican in all of Europe.
It is also home to at least 58 species of mammals, 12 species of amphibians, 22 species of reptiles, and 31 species of fish. Because of its biodiversity, it is one of Greece’s ten Wetlands of International Importance, also known as Ramsar wetlands, and is protected by other international conventions as well.
So come and discover, through our lens, a human creation that became one with nature and evolved into one of the most important wetlands in Europe.
