The Wadden islands are ‘wandering’. This and other facts about the island group off the Dutch, German and Danish coasts are described in a new atlas presented to director of the Wadden association Lutz Jacobi on Friday, public broadcaster NOS reports.

The atlas contains maps of all thirty inhabited Wadden islands, from Texel with 13,500 inhabitants to Südfall in Denmark with 2 and covers subjects such as ecology, tides, populations, tourism and culture.

Publishing house Noordhoff, which has brought out the schoolroom staple Bosatlas  since 1877, said the new atlas is a ‘journey of discovery’ charting the history of the islands, with a special focus on the tensions between conservation and human activity.

Bosch

One of the islands that no longer sees any human activity but was inhabited until 1570 is the lost island of Bosch. It was swallowed by the waves in 1717 but reappeared as part of another island later.

‘The dynamics of the islands are astounding,’ publisher Peter Vroege told NOS. ‘Schiermonnikoog moves, just like the other islands, from west to east. Bits of Bosch were found on the eastern most tips of the island.’

Conflicts

An effort to conquer the Wadden Sea, which was considered a danger to fisherman rather than an area of outstanding beauty, was by means of a dam between the shore and Ameland, faithfully recorded in the first Bosatlas of 1877. It was washed away in 1881 and duly disappeared from the atlas as well.  The remnants can still be seen at low tide.

The plan illustrates the conflicts that exists between different interest groups, Vroege told NOS. ‘There are lots of human interventions in nature that cause controversy. There are the oil platforms spoiling a beautiful horizon.

‘There is light pollution, noise from military training, cockle fishing causing damage.. We want to protect but we also want to live, work and play. That causes tensions.’

The biggest threat to the Wadden, however, is climate change. If sea levels rise, the Wadden will drown and its eco system with it. ‘Lots of people want to protect this unique area. It not been made a world heritage site  for nothing,’ NOS quotes Vroege as saying.