View of Arngast Lighthouse in the Wadden Sea

The Wadden Sea: A Unique HabitatDry and exposed to the sun at low tide, wet and salty at high tide – the Wadden Sea along the North Sea coast is subject to the constant changing tides. Parts of this natural landscape are a World Heritage Site.Several thousand square kilometers of the German and Dutch North Sea coasts are flooded and then dry again approximately every six hours. During low tide, all that remains of the sea are waterways, called tidal creeks, in the vast mudflats. The ability to wade through this area on foot gave the Wadden Sea its name, which is called "Waddenzee" in Dutch.This unique landscape stretches along the North Sea coast from Den Helder in the Netherlands to Esbjerg in Denmark. In some places, the mudflats extend more than 20 kilometers offshore. The islands off the coast serve as natural breakwaters.

How the Wadden Sea was formedSalt marshes are typical of the Wadden Sea. Special plants grow between the mudflats and the land.The Wadden Sea could only have formed because the glaciers of the most recent Ice Age melted about 10,000 years ago, causing sea levels to slowly rise. This led to significant changes in the North Sea coast over the next millennia. The mainland was flooded, and new sediment was carried into the region. The rock was deposited over the moors, swamps, and marsh forests typical of the time. In some places, however, the sea also carried away land. Through alternating erosion and deposition, the present-day Wadden Sea was formed in the gently sloping coastal area over the past 7,000 years.

People settled by the water early on.People discovered this region as a habitat early on and initially lived here by fishing and hunting before also using the region for agriculture. Settlement left clear traces. Agriculture was already practiced on Sylt, Föhr, and Amrum, for example, 4,000 years ago. In Roman times, farmers began building low earthen embankments, so-called summer dikes, to protect their land from storm surges.It wasn't until the tenth century that the local people systematically practiced dike construction. At that time, the aim was to isolate the settled land from the influence of the sea. These areas were repeatedly expanded in the following centuries. As a result, there are hardly any freshwater marshes and moors left there today. However, the embankment of these areas has had little effect on the extent of the Wadden Sea. The sea carries away sediment, carries it away, and deposits it somewhere – just in different places.