Unusual Strawberry Lake Bashny.Net

In Senegal, there is a lake very unusual color - bright pink. The impression is that it poured potassium permanganate. The water in this lake is so salty that dwell here can only be one kind of organism, which gives the color.

Locals earn that whole day draw salt from the lake bottom. Work hard enough, but by African standards he paid decently.





Amazing unusual color of the water and boats, boats ... They are located throughout the two-kilometer coastline Rose Lake, or Lake Retba - so it is called in the language of Wolof people, the largest ethnic group in Senegal.



These boats, punts are very similar to our Russian. But here they are not used for fishing or for transportation of hay, they do not swim in a nearby village. At this Senegalese lake they serve only to salt production.



What today is called the lake Retba, was once a lagoon. But gradually the Atlantic surf and sand pan out in the end duct, which connects the lagoon to the ocean, was asleep. For a long time Retba remained unremarkable salt lake. But in the 70 years of the last century in Senegal struck a series of droughts, Retba much became shallow and salt extraction, lies a thick layer on the bottom, has become quite profitable.



It now employs people standing on the shoulders in water, and twenty years ago by Rose Lake did not swim, and go - there was water on the belt. However, producing annually about twenty-five thousand tons of salt, people rapidly deepen the lake. In some places its bottom dropped very significantly - by three meters and more.



Lake water acquired a pink tinge due to microorganisms which are capable of existing in a saturated saline solution. In addition to these other organic life in Retba not - for algae, not to mention the fish, the salt concentration of such pernicious. It is almost one and a half times higher than in the Dead Sea - three hundred and eighty grams per liter ...



The scientific explanation of such an unusual color of the water decided to find a microbiologist Bernard Oliver. The lake is inhabited organism Dunaliella salina, which absorbs sunlight and emits color pigment.