Floating on a salty breeze

a serene landscape for exploring nature and industry

Originally published on Greengale

hypersaline lake

The shallow hypersaline bodies of water in the world—such as the small evaporation ponds in San Francisco Bay, the stunning Chaerhan Salt Lake in northwest China's Qinghai province, and my subject here, the Great Salt Lake in Utah, exhibit a variety of vivid colors due to the presence of extremophile microorganisms including Dunaliella salina, an algae that produces beta carotene to protect itself from the sun and salt, and Halophilic archaea (such as Halobacterium) that contain a purple-red pigment called bacteriorhodopsin, which they use to capture light, turning the water pink when populations bloom.

Stark contrast can emerge when a lake is partitioned by industrial use. In this image from the middle of Stansbury Bay, the southwest arm of the GSL, the pink north portion above is home to a brine shrimp farming operation, while the turquoise south portion feeds salt evaporation ponds. While I didn't bring an instrument to test, and both sides of the causeway here are very salty, it looks like the pink side has much higher salinity. I would be interested to see the contents up close to find the differences in microbiome.

Aerial drone photograph looking straight down at a salt lake divided by a causeway. The upper half of the image shows deep rose-pink water, while the lower half displays pale turquoise water. A white salt-crusted shoreline curves into a dramatic V-shape or heart-like notch between the two bodies of water, with bands of brown and gray sediment along its edges. A small orange-yellow structure or piece of equipment sits at the point where the two waters nearly meet. The stark color contrast between the pink and blue-green waters, separated by the bright white salt deposits, creates a striking abstract composition.

You can probably find this spot in a minute or two on Google Maps. If not, here you go: 40.867383, -112.578937. Note that the satellite photos are color-adjusted to try to look normal compared to the rest of the surroundings—Google Maps is not true to color.

industrial extraction

The Great Salt Lake brine shrimp industry is significant—tiny Artemia cysts harvested here get shipped around the world as feed for aquaculture and tropical fish. The GSL is the world's primary source of this fish food.

The salt evaporation operations on the southern shores have been running for over a century, and are operated primarily by two companies, Morton and Cargill, which are widely distributed to grocery stores, although they usually don't include a photo of the location on the package (say the word and I'll go out there and get a photo of the salt piles).

The defunct and troubled US Magnesium plant, a superfund site and the largest Utah's largest air polluter until it was shut down a few years ago, where magnesium used to be extracted from the lake, sits just west of here.

planning your visit

The beach here, while serene and beautiful, is off-limits to most tourists. People sometimes hop the gate and walk out there anyway. If you decide to visit, do it during the late fall, winter, or early spring (summer is miserable with the brine flies and mosquitoes), preferably on a day when it's been dry for at least a week (you don't want to be driving or walking in this area when it's muddy), preferably around sunset, bring a camera drone, and dress warm. 🏖️

A breathtaking landscape photograph of a vast, mirror-still body of water creating a near-perfect reflection of the sky above. Wispy white clouds stretch across a soft blue sky, and their reflection in the glassy water below creates a symmetrical, dreamlike effect. The horizon line is barely visible, marked by distant dark mountains or hills. The water has pink and purple hues in the foreground, while the sky above shows gradations of pale blue and white. The stillness of the water makes it nearly impossible to distinguish where the sky ends and the reflection begins, except for the mountains on the horizon, creating an ethereal, almost surreal scene.

Originally created: 2025-12-31T07:14:57.657Z

Note: this is a repost of a post that was a casualty to the editor in a test build of the GreenGale V2 migration