History of Mljet

The history of the Mljet national park begins thousands of years ago, when in the Cretaceous period deposits gathered here and so created the typical limestone and dolomite ground. The ground was very irregular, as today's mountain ranges prove. With the rise of sea level at the end of the last ice age, some valleys and the thresholds in front of them were flooded, so that the bays typical of the national park arose, which however — not least because of the dense woodland — are perceived by the locals as lakes: Veliko Jezero is 145 hectares in size and up to 46 m deep; the smaller Malo Jezero, lying behind it as seen from the sea, still measures 24 hectares and 29 m in depth. Some scientists speculate that in antiquity these lakes really were still true lakes, that is, enclosed by land all round. Yet even then they would already have been fed by sea water because of the permeable limestone. What is certain is that the rising sea level is making the openings within the lakes ever wider, so that in the not too distant future they will indeed recall bays rather than lakes. In order to point out this circumstance and to sensitise environmental awareness to this subject, the north-western part of the island of Mljet was declared a national park as early as 1960. So it seems rather counterproductive to learn that in the same year the opening of the Veliko Jezero, then only 4 m wide and 1 m deep, was widened into a channel 2.6 m deep and 13.6 m wide in order to ease shipping traffic with the harbour of Solina. Yet precisely thereby tourism was supported, through which many more people learn of the consequences of rising sea level than merely the few hundred islanders, who for their part do suffer under this tendency but cannot stop it on their own. And the narrows between Veliko Jezero and Malo Jezero were left in their natural state, so that today they are 2.6 m wide and about half a metre deep. In the year 1997 the surrounding belt of sea was added to the area especially worth protecting, so that the park today shows an area of 54 square kilometres, of which 23 are covered by water.