Yilan Island

Yilan Island, known to most visitors by its English name Snake Island, lies about 1.5 kilometres off the coast near Kalkan, in the Kas district of Antalya Province. It is uninhabited, has no beach and no facilities of any kind, and can only be reached by boat, so almost everyone who sees it does so from the deck of a yacht or on a diving trip.

Historical Background

In antiquity Yilan Island was one of the Xenagorou islands (Ancient Greek: Xenagorou nesoi), the small group that also included its neighbour to the northeast. Nothing was ever built here and no settlement is recorded, so the ancient link survives only in the name and in the island's position on the Lycian coastal route.

Geography

The island's longer axis runs southwest to northeast and measures a little over 2 kilometres. Yilan is Turkish for snake, and the long, narrow outline is the usual explanation for the name. The nearest point of the Anatolian mainland is roughly 1.5 kilometres away.

Just to the northeast sits the smaller Sican Island, Mouse Island in Turkish and often called Rat Island in English, a roughly circular islet covering about 0.15 square kilometres. The two are almost always visited together, and the deep water around them is what brings divers out from Kalkan.

Anchoring and Conditions

The island is open to wind from every direction, so anchoring is only sensible in settled weather. The usual spot is off the western shore, in about 20 metres over sand and weed, which gives good holding. There is nowhere to land properly and the only permanent residents are a few goats, so a stop here means swimming and snorkelling rather than going ashore.

Summer temperatures on this stretch of the Mediterranean regularly climb above 30 C, with the sea warming to around 26 C by midsummer. Kalkan itself belongs to the Kas district, and skippers working this coast treat Yilan as one of the anchorages you'll visit on a private gulet charter from Kas and Kalkan, usually as a swim stop on the way to or from the dive sites.

Diving

Yilan and Sican sit in the path of the currents that run in from open sea towards Kalkan, and those currents have carved out the reefs and rock formations that make the area one of the better known dive areas on this coast. Groupers, barracuda, tuna and rays are regularly seen, and turtles turn up as well.

• Sican Island, to the north, has the calmer and shallower water and is where beginners usually dive.
• The wall along the southern edge of Yilan Island drops to 80-100 metres and is dived by experienced divers only.
• Summer brings the most settled conditions and the best visibility.