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Most of us are aware that the Dead Sea is awash with salt. So much so, in fact, that it makes swimming similar to floating. But while this famous body of water is one of the world's saltiest, there are other lakes with a higher saline content. Salinity is the measure of the amount of dissolved salts in water. It is usually expressed in parts per thousand (ppt) or percentage (%). In this gallery, the salinity of the featured lakes is expressed as ppt. But what lakes are we talking about, and where are they located?
Click through and discover 15 of the saltiest bodies of water on Earth.
Hamelin Pool is located in Shark Bay in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia. It's the centerpiece of the Hamelin Pool Marine Nature Reserve, which boasts a remarkable collection of living marine stromatolites that are over 3.5 billion years old, according to Explore Parks WA.
Hamelin Pool is hypersaline, which means it has approximately double the salinity of normal seawater. More accurately, its salinity is 66 ppt—an ideal environment for the stromatolites to grow.
Located at the eastern edge of California, between the arid Great Basin and the snowy Sierra Nevada, Mono Lake is reckoned to be at least 760,000 years old.
Mono Lake has a salinity of 88 ppt, as well as an extremely high alkalinity. This has created a rare and productive ecosystem based on brine shrimp and alkali flies. This rich bounty attracts more than 80 species of migratory birds.
Despite its considerable size (it covers approximately 57 sq mi, or 150 sq km), Lake Abert in Oregon is just 11 feet (3.4 m) at its deepest. Its salinity is 120 ppt.
No fish live in the alkaline waters of Lake Abert. The hypersaline environment does, however, support a dense population of brine shrimp, which, in turn, sustains a variety of shorebirds.
Great Salt Lake in Utah is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere. A causeway divides the lake into two parts and serves as a major transportation corridor.
The South Arm of the lake measures 142 ppt, considerably lower than its opposite portion. There's also a color difference, depending on the seasons. The waters of South Arm are blue-green in early spring; the waters of North Arm are pink in late summer and fall.
Little Manitou Lake is a small saltwater lake about 75 miles (120 km) south-east of Saskatoon. Despite its diminutive proportions, Little Manitou has a salinity of 180 ppt. That's half the salinity of the Dead Sea!
Little Manitou's mineral-rich waters are claimed by some to hold curative properties, and these supposed well-being benefits have turned the lake into a popular health tourism spot. The region around the "Dead Sea of Canada" is also famed for its 1920s-era Danceland Ballroom, set on Manitou Beach.
A salinity of between 85–280 ppt has variously been recorded at Lake Urmia in northwestern Iran. One of the early mentions of Lake Urmia is from Assyrian records dating to the 9th century BCE.
Persistent drought in Iran threatened the existence of Lake Urmia before heavy rain in 2019; water diversion from the Zab River reversed the situation. The lake today forms part of a protected national park.
Lake Baskunchak in Astrakhan Oblast enjoys a long history as the location of a thriving salt-mining operation. Indeed, its salt was traded along the Silk Road.
The salinity of Lake Baskunchak is an impressive 300 ppt. That translates as salt with a purity of around 99.8% sodium chloride. Today, depending on demand, 1.5 million to 5 million tons of salt are mined here per year—80% of Russia's entire commercial salt production.
So, what of Great Salt Lake's North Arm? Earlier it was pointed out that the South Arm has a salinity of 142 ppt. Well, the North Arm is over twice that. In fact, 319 ppt. But why?
The difference lies in the fact that the flow of brine through the causeway is restricted and also because Great Salt Lake receives most of its fresh water into its South Arm.
The Dead Sea is in fact a landlocked lake bordered by Jordan to the east and the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Israel to the west. It is one of the world's saltiest bodies of water—9.6 times as salty as the ocean—with a ppt value of 337.
The Dead Sea's other claim to fame is that the lake's surface is 1,412 ft (430.5 m) below sea level, making its shores the lowest land-based elevation on Earth. Plus, it's 997 ft (304 m) deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world.
Djibouti's Lake Assal also sinks well below sea level, to 509 ft (155 m), thus making it the lowest point on land in Africa. But it's high on salinity, averaging 348 ppt.
Salt extraction from Lake Assal dates back centuries to when the Afar nomad tribes of camel drivers and Issas from Lake Assal's salt bank established ancient caravan routes. Salt mining continues today, though the lake falls within an environmental protection zone.
Garabogazköl, seen here in a NASA satellite photograph, is a shallow lagoon off the Caspian Sea in northwestern Turkmenistan.
Garabogazköl's salinity ppt averages 350. But this figure varies due to the fact that waters from the Caspian Sea flow through a narrow inlet into the Garabogazköl (pictured), which also affects volume.
Lake Vanda is tucked away in the Wright Valley in Antarctica. Fed by glacial meltwater by the Onyx River during the summer months, Vanda is approximately 3 mi long (5 km) and up to 250 ft (76 m) in places. With a salinity of 350 ppt, its waters are 10 times more saline than that of seawater.
While the surface waters of Lake Vanda are perennially ice-covered, a thermal inversion caused by the hypersaline nature of the deeper water allows water temperatures to reach nearly 80°F (26.6°C) at the lake's bottom. Meanwhile, the ridges of the Transantarctic Mountains keep Wright Valley (pictured) virtually precipitation free.
The landmark Lake Retba on the Cap-Vert peninsula in Senegal is often referred to as Lac Rose (meaning "pink lake").
The lake's salinity is high, around 40% in some areas, which translates to 400 ppt, a result of the ingress of Atlantic Ocean seawater and subsequent evaporation. Retba's rusty hue, meanwhile, is due to rare microbiome that has long fostered an algae that turned its waters a pinkish color.
Keeping Vanda company in Antarctica's Wright Valley is the unlikely sounding Don Juan Pond.
With a salinity of 338 ppt, this is the saltiest of the Antarctic lakes. So salty, in fact, it causes significant freezing-point depression, allowing the pond to remain liquid even at temperatures as low as −58°F (−50°C). By the way, the pond is named after two helicopter pilots, Don Roe and John Hickey, who piloted the helicopter involved with the first field party investigating this remote body of water.
And the saltiest lake on Earth? Well, actually, that's another pond, Gaet'ale Pond in Ethiopia. Part of a series of small ponds situated near the Dallol Spring, Gaet'ale's salinity is an astonishing 433 ppt, making it the saltiest body of water in the world.
This incredibly high salinity (43%) is thanks to volcanic processes in the area. The water is composed mainly of calcium chloride and magnesium chloride.
Sources: (Explore Parks WA) (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) (PBase) (NASA)
See also: The oldest, largest, and deepest lake in the world
The saltiest lakes in the world, ranked
Where are the lakes with the highest salinity?
TRAVEL Environment
Most of us are aware that the Dead Sea is awash with salt. So much so, in fact, that it makes swimming similar to floating. But while this famous body of water is one of the world's saltiest, there are other lakes with a higher saline content. Salinity is the measure of the amount of dissolved salts in water. It is usually expressed in parts per thousand (ppt) or percentage (%). In this gallery, the salinity of the featured lakes is expressed as ppt. But what lakes are we talking about, and where are they located?
Click through and discover 15 of the saltiest bodies of water on Earth.