18 articles
Akyatan Lagoon
Akyatan Lagoon (Akyatan Lagünü), Turkey's largest lagoon, is a choked, temporarily hypersaline coastal lagoon in Karataş, Adana, on the Mediterranean. Ramsar site no. 943 since 1998 (14,700 ha), it hosts 250+ bird species, wintering flamingos, and major green sea turtle nesting beaches.
Bahiret el Bibane
Bahiret el Bibane (Bahiret el Biban), a hypersaline coastal lagoon of about 230 km2 in southeastern Tunisia near the Libyan border, a Ramsar site since 2007 famed for its 3.5 km traditional bordigue fish barrier and nursery fisheries.
Beymelek Lagoon
Beymelek Lagoon (Beymelek Lagünü), a 255 ha brackish coastal lagoon in Demre, Antalya, Turkey, the only natural lagoon on the country's western Mediterranean coast, fed by karst springs, with a state seabass and seabream hatchery and protected wetland status.
Biscayne Bay
Biscayne Bay is a shallow subtropical lagoon along Miami-Dade County, Florida, from Haulover Inlet to Key Largo, home to Biscayne National Park and state aquatic preserves; a $64 billion economic asset facing seagrass loss, nutrient pollution, and Everglades restoration efforts.
Central Syvash
Central Syvash (Центральний Сиваш), Ramsar Site 115 in Ukraine and Crimea, is an 80,000 ha hypersaline lagoon wetland designated in 1976, hosting about 10,000 nesting waterbird pairs and up to 1,000,000 staging birds, with salinity rising sharply after the 2014 canal closure.
Coorong National Park
Coorong National Park (Kurrangk) protects a 100-plus-km hypersaline coastal lagoon at the end of the River Murray in South Australia, a Ramsar wetland managed with barrage environmental flows and home to the Ngarrindjeri people.
Coral reef lagoon
Coral reef lagoon: the shallow, sheltered water body between a reef and shore or inside an atoll rim, connected to the ocean by channels and passes; sandy substrate, patch reefs, distinct benthic communities, lowest coral diversity on lagoon slopes.
Eastern Syvash
Eastern Syvash (Ramsar site 769) is a 165,000 ha shallow hypersaline lagoon wetland in Kherson and Crimea, Ukraine, designated 1997, vital for migratory waterbirds, occupied by Russia since 2014 and fully since 2022.
Hutt Lagoon
Hutt Lagoon (Pink Lake) is a ~70 km² hypersaline coastal brine lagoon near Port Gregory, Western Australia, pink from Dunaliella salina carotenoids, hosting the world's largest microalgae beta-carotene farm and a former 1924 salt industry.
Kerala backwaters
The Kerala backwaters, also called the Backwaters of Kerala, are a network of canals, lakes, and lagoons stretching over 900 kilometers along India's Malabar Coast, best known for houseboat cruises and tourism.
Lagoon
Lagoon: a shallow body of water separated from the sea or ocean by a barrier; two types, atoll lagoons inside coral rings and coastal lagoons behind sand barriers, with salinity from fresh to hypersaline.
Lake Burullus
Lake Burullus (بحيرة البرلس), Egypt's second-largest coastal lagoon in the Nile Delta, a hypereutrophic Ramsar wetland fed by agricultural drains, connected to the Mediterranean through the narrow El-Boughaz inlet, and under rehabilitation since 2018.
Lake Macquarie (New South Wales)
Lake Macquarie (Awaba) is a large coastal saltwater lake on the Hunter coast of New South Wales, Australia, just south of Newcastle and about 90 km north of Sydney.
Lake Maracaibo
Lake Maracaibo (Lago de Maracaibo), Venezuela's large brackish estuary and South America's largest lake, heart of the country's oil industry since 1914, now heavily affected by oil spills and eutrophication.
Sistema Delta Estuarino del Río Magdalena, Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta
Sistema Delta Estuarino del Río Magdalena, Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta (SDERM CGSM): Colombia's largest coastal lagoon and first Ramsar site (1998, site 951), a Caribbean brackish wetland hit by causeway-driven mangrove die-off, partially rehabilitated by 1990s dredging, and invaded by Hydrilla verticillata in 2025.
Syvash
Syvash (Сиваш), the Rotten or Putrid Sea, is the world's largest hypersaline lagoon (about 2,560 km²) between Crimea and the Ukrainian mainland, separated from the Sea of Azov by the Arabat Spit; its salinity fell under North Crimean Canal inflow and rose sharply after the canal's 2014 closure.
Tuzly Lagoons (Тузлові лимани)
Tuzly Lagoons (Тузлові лимани), Shagany-Alibei-Burnas system, are brackish Black Sea limans in Odesa Oblast, Ukraine; a Ramsar site and, since 2010, a 27,865 ha national nature park.
Venetian Lagoon
Venetian Lagoon (Laguna di Venezia), shallow 550 km² Mediterranean tidal lagoon in northeast Italy, connected to the Adriatic by the Lido, Malamocco, and Chioggia inlets; UNESCO-listed with Venice in 1987, eroding salt marshes, MoSE flood barriers.