Seven Islands

The Seven Islands, known in Turkish as Yedi Adalar, are a chain of small, pine-covered islets on the southeastern side of the Gulf of Gökova, roughly 30 kilometres north of Marmaris. Uninhabited and largely undeveloped, they sit close enough to the mainland that a gulet can weave between them in a single afternoon, dropping anchor in whichever cove offers the best shelter from the day's wind.

Five Islands and Two Islets

The name overstates the count slightly: the group is made up of five small islands and two islets rather than seven equal members. The named islands are Göllü, Küçük, Zeytinli, Uzun and Martılı, and none of them exceeds 0.1 square kilometres — these are outcrops rather than islands in any ordinary sense. Four of them lie roughly parallel to the coastline and about 250 metres apart, while Göllü sits on its own around a kilometre north of the rest. The whole group lies less than a kilometre off the mainland, within the Marmaris district of Muğla province, which is why the channels between them feel closer to inland waterways than to open sea.

Anchorages Along the Shore

Most of the anchoring happens not among the islets themselves but in the coves that face them across the narrow strip of water. Running north to south, these are Küfre Koyu, Babuş Bükü, Uzun Liman, Bekar Limanı and Çamaltı, all of them backed by dense pine forest that comes down almost to the waterline. The bottoms here are generally soft mud that holds an anchor well, and the surrounding hills cut most of the prevailing summer breeze — the practical reason the area became a fixture on blue cruise routes rather than somewhere boats simply pass through.

Navigation still calls for attention. The shallow rocky shelves that make the snorkelling worthwhile also mean submerged rocks lie off several of the islets, and charting here is less detailed than the volume of summer traffic would suggest. Boats generally keep to the deeper middle of the channels and approach the coves slowly, with someone watching from the bow.

A Bay That Was Brought Back to Life

What makes the water around the Seven Islands unusual is less the scenery than what has happened beneath it over the past fifteen years. In 2010 the whole of Gökova Bay was closed to large-scale fishing by official decree, and six areas — among them Akyaka, Çamlı, Boncuk, Bördübet and Akbük — were declared full no-fishing zones, with nearly half the bay also shut to bottom trawling. From 2013 a ranger system, run by the Mediterranean Conservation Society together with local authorities, gave those rules teeth for the first time.

The results are among the most cited conservation successes in the Mediterranean. Fish biomass inside the protected zones multiplied, the dusky grouper returned in numbers, and local fishery data record roughly a fourfold rise in fisher incomes since the ranger scheme began. The bay now holds close to 73 per cent of Turkey's recorded fish species. The sandbar shark, a vulnerable apex predator that had all but disappeared, has been recorded increasing year on year, to the point that the authorities have moved to extend two of the no-fishing zones by a further 700 hectares to protect its habitat, and the endangered Mediterranean monk seal breeds and feeds in the bay alongside critically endangered angel sharks.

Sedir Island and Cleopatra Beach

The best-known landmark elsewhere in the Gulf of Gökova, and a common addition to the same itinerary, is Sedir Island off the Ula shore. Its fame rests on a north-facing bay whose beach is made of rare ooidal sand — tiny spherical grains eroded out of a submerged Neogene oolitic sandstone bed, unlike ordinary sand anywhere else on this coast. Because it cannot regenerate on any human timescale, the beach is strictly protected: visitors may not walk on the sand, lay out towels or carry grains away, and the rules are enforced.

The island also carries the ruins of ancient Kedrai, a Carian settlement documented from the 5th century BC that passed in turn under Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine control. A theatre seating roughly 2,500 survives, along with the remains of a sanctuary of Apollo, basilica walls and a necropolis on the mainland opposite. Sedir opens to visitors as an archaeological site from May through October.

Taken together, the islets, the coves and the recovering water make the archipelago one of the anchorages you'll visit on a private gulet charter from Marmaris, usually sailed as part of a longer route toward the Bodrum peninsula. Diving and snorkelling are the main draws beyond swimming, since the shallow rocky shelves around the islets support coral growth and a healthy variety of Aegean marine life.