THE DEAD SEA – THE SALTY TREASURE TO

There are places on the face of this Earth that might disappear before we all get a chance to see their beauty. Ironically most of those places will disappear because so many want to see their beauty. We hope you enjoy the list of Top Ten Places to See Before They’re Gone as we continue with a salty treasure from the Middle East – The Dead Sea.

The Dead Sea also called the Salt Sea, is actually a salt lake bordering Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank to the west. Its surface and shores are 423 metres (1,388 ft) below sea level, which makes it Earth’s lowest elevation on land. The Dead Sea is 377 m (1,237 ft) deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world. With 33.7% salinity, it is also one of the world’s saltiest bodies of water. It is 8.6 times saltier than the ocean.vIn such salinity animals cannot flourish, hence its name.

It’s a wonder that this hypersaline lake even exists at 1,388 feet below sea level, but tourists have flocked to its supposed healing waters for thousands of years. However, the Dead Sea is dying. Forget climate change (though summer temps can reach as high to 120 degrees), it’s human consumption that’s the real problem that this treasure faces here. Water from the Jordan River (the feeder to the sea) is used for industrial purposes and is diverting as much as 95 percent of the water away from the Dead Sea.

The Dead Sea may soon shrink to a lifeless pond as Middle East political strife blocks vital measures needed to halt the decay of the world’s lowest and saltiest body of water, experts say.The surface level is plunging by a metre (three feet) a year and nothing has yet been done to reverse the decline because of a lack of political cooperation as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The shoreline has receded by more than a kilometre (around a mile) in some places and the world-famous lake, a key tourism destination renowned for the beneficial effect of its minerals, could dry out by 2050, according to some calculations. Landlocked between Jordan, Israel and the West Bank, the Dead Sea is rapidly vanishing because water which previously flowed into the lake is being diverted and also extracted to service industry and agriculture. Luckily the authorities have taken upon some actions. Let’s just hope they will execute it.