The short, no more than 46.6 km long coast of Slovene Istra was at the beginning of this century still strewn with a number of salt-pans. The most important among them were the Piran salt-pans, of which only the miniature pans at Strunjan and the extensive Secovlje salt-pans (covering some 850 ha) along the mouth of the Dragonja River have survived to this day.