The area around Emerald Lake is currently a popular place to relax among the inhabitants of Szczecin. It wasn’t always like that. Until 1925, there was an excavation of an intensively exploited marl mine, which supplied raw material to the nearby cement factory called Stern, owned by the Toepffer family. However, in search of the precious rock, the miners went too deep. On July 16, 1925, in the southern escarpment of the excavation, they uncovered an aquifer layer of permeable sand. The excavation was quickly flooded. People managed to evacuate, but there was not enough time to save the equipment. All of it, including the route of the railway and tunnels leading to the inside of the escarpment, to buildings whose purpose we do not know today – all this disappeared under the surface of the water. What has been excavated and what has been hidden in the murky waters of the lake for nearly a hundred years of its existence? What secrets does Szczecin’s Emerald Lake hide?

Today, exploration by divers is not easy due to the low transparency of the water and the large number of tree crowns sliding down from the escarpments surrounding the basin. No one knows what potential danger the remains of mining infrastructure may pose to divers.

The development of a complete bathymetric map of the Emerald Lake is a challenge that no one has undertaken so far. Using the Uncrewed Surface Vessel mKurs from K2sea, equipped with the highest-class Norbit Subsea multibeam echosounder, Geo Ingenieurservice hydrographers working remotely conducted a complete bathymetric survey of the entire lake basin.
Results – coming soon!

The entire team working on Emerald Lake sends greetings and thanks to the members of the Szczecin Exploration Association for a wealth of valuable information about the history and surroundings of the lake. And for excellent hot tea, invaluable in January conditions!