Qualla: Anzali Lagoon

Anzali Lagoon: Introduction

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shadparisa, CC BY-SA 4.0. Before 1950, the Anzali Lagoon produced 5,000 tons of fish every year -- roughly 70 percent of all commercial fish caught in Gilan Province. It was the engine of an economy, a nursery for Caspian sturgeon, and a wintering ground for birds migrating between Siberia and Africa. Today the lagoon covers less than a quarter of the area it occupied in the 1930s. The water is shallower. The pollution is worse. And yet 243 species of birds still arrive every year, because even diminished, Anzali remains one of the most important wetlands in Iran.

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Image: Shadparisa | CC BY-SA 4.0

Anzali Lagoon: A Lagoon That Splits a City

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Hara1603 assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. Anzali Lagoon stretches across 15,000 hectares near the Caspian port city of Bandar-e Anzali in Gilan Province. The lagoon physically divides the city in two, a body of water so large that it defines the urban geography of the community built around it. Within its boundaries lie ...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Hara1603 assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Anzali Lagoon: Wings Over the Wetland

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Karol Tofil, CC BY 2.5. Of the 243 bird species identified at Anzali, 112 are aquatic and 131 terrestrial. More than 70 percent are migratory or wintering visitors, arriving on schedules that have not changed since long before the lagoon earned its Ramsar Convention listing on December 21, 1975. Spring ...

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Image: Karol Tofil | CC BY 2.5

Anzali Lagoon: Shrinking Waters

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Karol Tofil, CC BY 2.5. The lagoon's decline has been steady and largely self-inflicted. Urban waste from Bandar-e Anzali flows directly into the water. Industrial runoff adds chemical contamination. The city dump once sat on the wetland's bank. Caspian lotus and mats of Azolla fern have proliferated ac...

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Image: Karol Tofil | CC BY 2.5

Anzali Lagoon: Conservation Under Pressure

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mardetanha, CC BY-SA 3.0. Anzali was among the first Iranian wetlands listed under the Ramsar Convention, and it has since been placed on the Montreux Record -- a register of Ramsar sites where ecological character has changed or is likely to change due to human activity. Environmentalists have fought pro...

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Image: Mardetanha | CC BY-SA 3.0