Lake Pape

Lake Pape is an overgrown lagoon-type lake with saltwater vegetation. It is located in the coastal lowland, less than one kilometer from the Baltic Sea, formed after the last ice age. The total area of the lake is 2985 ha, length 8.3 km, width up to 3.2 km, height above sea level - 0.1 m. The lake is very shallow, the average depth is 0.5 m. The length of the coastline is 40.4 km. The lake bed is large and shallow, the greatest depth is around 2 m. The deepest places are located in the eastern part of the lake towards Kalniškii and Bruvšivti, as well as towards the inlet of Līgupe in the lake. The bottom of the lake is mostly flat, with a thick mud layer, the bed is almost continuously covered with a 0.5 m thick mud layer.

A nature trail has been created around the lake, which invites you to a 32 km long test around Pape lake. A special license is required to fish in Lake Papes.

The fish fauna of Lake Pape is diverse, typical of shallow coastal lagoon-like lakes, where salty waters from the Baltic Sea enter. 12 species of fish were found in it - pike, flounder, tench, silver crucian carp, roach, roach, ausley and others. Salmon, sea trout, eels and walleyes migrate from the sea to the lake. Lake Pape is interesting because there are also fish here, which usually live only in the sea. 16 fish species have been detected in the Pape channel, including one of the fish species protected in the European Union: the spud. It is thought that a relatively small population also lives in Lake Pape. The broad-clawed crayfish, which is a species of crayfish protected in the European Union, has also been found there. The influence of the water exchange is seawater, which, when flowing into the lake regularly, forms the special biological diversity characteristic of lagoon-type lakes.

Lake Pape and its surroundings are an important place for bird nesting and concentration of migratory birds, especially waterfowl. It is one of the most important nesting sites of the protected bird species - the great tern (Botarus stellaris), the reed warbler (Circus aeruginosus) and the little osprey (Porzana parva) in Latvia. Many other bird species listed in Annex 1 of the EU Birds Directive also nest in the lake, for example, the world-endangered sedge warbler (Acrocephalus paludicola) can still be found in Lake Papes. The lake is also a nationally important nesting site for reed birds such as the Seivi's tern (Locustella luscinioides) (several hundred pairs) and the bearded vulture (Panurus biarmicus). During autumn migrations, hundreds and sometimes even thousands of migrating cranes and geese gather in the lake for recreation.

Pape Lake is an important protection site of the habitat of the EU Habitats Directive - a mesotrophic water body with benthic kelp vegetation. In addition, protected habitats such as gray dunes with low herbaceous vegetation, calcareous herb marshes with large aslapia, species-rich wolfberry meadows on sandy soils, molinia meadows on calcareous or clayey soils, coastal sandbanks, embryonic dunes, untouched high marshes, transitional swamps and bogs, boreal forests.

Lake Pape is a lake rich in organic matter, or a mesotrophic lake. Charophyta flora grows here. On the shores of the lake and in the creeks, there are large sedges (Cladium mariscus audzesm), which are relatively common here, but are very rare in Latvia, because these plants grow in calcareous soils. These biotopes are rare and protected in Latvia and throughout the European Union.

The lake occupies a part of the Litorina sea depression, which stretches from the Nida marsh in the south to the Liepāja lake in the north. This depression is separated from the sea by a narrow strip of coastal dunes. Bays and peninsulas carve the shoreline of Lake Pape, which is variable during the flood. The shores of the lake are mostly flat, low and sandy, peaty on the western and northwestern shores, sandy on the eastern and southwestern shores, and rocky on the northern end.

About why there are so many large stones on the eastern shore of Lake Pape, it is said: "The devil carried stones from Jodkrantes (Curonian area) to Lake Stulbo (former Lake Meiķe). The rooster crowed in the Pape Sesku manor did not manage to take them to the Sulbajs lake. All the stones have fallen here along the edge of Lake Pape from the great fear of the devil". In general, the area is flat, to the south and west it is also low and marshy. The lake has several islands and peninsulas, the number of which also tends to change during floods.

While the lake's outlet to the sea was open, high tides and autumn storms drove water into the shallow lake and flooded roads and meadows. Therefore, already in 1830, the first wooden dam was installed on the outflow of the lake to the sea - now the Pape canal. In the following 200 years, the water level of the lake was regulated by carrying out various measures to regulate the hydrological regime: the construction and restoration of the dam on the outlet of Lake Papes to the sea, the creation of the Papes polder, the construction of the Paurupe - Līgupe canal. Although these regulations partially stabilized water level changes, in the Papes lake in spring, autumn and during strong storms, in the sixties of the last century, when the Paurupes - Līgupes canal was built, the process of water exchange in the lake worsened, reduced