Warsaw: SiltaNews – News Desk
The lavender-tinted shoreline in Mielno, a town roughly 190 km west of Gdańsk, has been flooded with locals and tourists, eager to photograph the surreal scene. “At first, I thought it was some kind of ecological disaster,” one visitor told GK24, “but when I looked closer, I noticed that the purple color came from a natural deposit.”
Scientists say the color comes from manganese-rich silicate minerals, mainly almandine garnet, that have weathered into fine purple grains mixing with the usual quartz sand.
Professor Leszek Łęczyński from the University of Gdańsk told local news outlet GK24 that the sand poses no health risks but warned, “this unique attraction may soon disappear. It all depends on the wind.”
Such vividly colored shores are rare in Europe but more familiar along the garnet-rich rock formations of the Canadian Shield and parts of the northern United States.