St. Peter Island

Worth a detour

A low islet a few hundred metres off Sozopol, sitting beside the much larger St Ivan and sharing its protected status. There is nothing on it and nothing to do there; it matters as part of the only Bulgarian seabird island group, and it is the thing in the foreground of every photograph taken from the old town's northern rocks.

Story

Background

St Ivan and St Peter were declared a protected site together in 1993, with the area later revised to a little over thirty hectares. The purpose is the birds: this is the main Bulgarian breeding station for gulls and shags on open sea rocks, and more than seventy species have been recorded across the two islands.

The restrictions are narrower than people assume. Construction, quarrying, afforestation with alien species and damage to the rocks are all banned outright. Hunting, fishing and archaeological excavation are banned during the breeding season from the first of April to the thirtieth of July. There is also a specific prohibition on taking the islands' rabbits off St Ivan. What the order does not contain is any ban on landing, which is why the Sozopol boats can put people ashore on the larger island.

St Peter itself is too small and too steep to be worth a landing and none is offered. From the boat you see the shape of the pair and the gull colonies; from the town you see the islets closing the bay to the north. If you want the birds rather than the archaeology, go out in the morning rather than on the sunset trip, and take binoculars: the pelagic species that make the site important are usually on the water rather than on the rock.