Lake Bardawil

Lake Bardawil is a shallow hypersaline lagoon strung along the northern Sinai coast, about thirty kilometres long and fourteen wide at its broadest point. A narrow sandbar divides it from the open Mediterranean, but sea-water leaks through often enough to keep the lagoon intensely salty. Depths rarely exceed three metres, and drifting sand is gradually turning parts of the basin into sabkha salt-flat.

The lagoon keeps its name from a Crusader king: Baldwin I of Jerusalem, who raided the Egyptian coast repeatedly in the early twelfth century. In the spring of 1118 he was returning from one such raid and paused to fish at the mouth of a Nile distributary; he fell ill there and died before he could reach Jerusalem. The coastal stretch where he met his end kept his Arabised name — Bārdawīl — and has held it ever since.

Today the lagoon is a Ramsar-protected wetland (designated 1988), a major flyway stop for migrating waterbirds, and an internationally significant breeding ground for the little tern. Sea turtles and bottlenose dolphins also use it, and six threatened plant species cluster around its edges, among them the endemic iris Iris mariae.