Caliboy in Brooklyn: Desert Rift Lake: the Salton Sea

Monday, November 5, 2012

Desert Rift Lake: the Salton Sea

The Salton Sea is California's largest lake, averaging fifteen miles wide by thirty-five miles long. It's the topographically lowest point in the Salton Sink, a large depression that had for many millenia been a very large lake. The Salton Sea is brackish, or salty, more so than the Pacific, but less so than the Great Salt Lake in Utah. It's also a rift lake, that is, it's filling in the lowest points caused by a rift valley, or a fault-line.

Also, it was accidently formed. A flood built up a plug that blocked the water's escape, and in other times, the Sea of Cortez would have gone all the way to Coachella. Water flows in, and evaporation is its only outlet.

There was even a time when the Salton Sea was a resort, and folks would venture forth from both the Southland and the Bay Area. Now...

...now the salt water is so salty that boat's engines break down quickly, so boating's done with, and airplane travel became much more affordable, so Salton Sea, like Catalina, became less of a destination. Catalina, though, as an island, retains an exoticism that is absent out here in the desert.

It is a sight to see, though, when you drive towards it, out in the middle of the desert, a lake stretching off to the horizon and no opposing shore visible:

Our adventure began earlier that day, leaving our place in Long Beach and driving out the two hours to the middle of the desert. The blue water stretched off, and we turned left into a "neighborhood" that had signs signifying that it was called Shoreline Village. It was a large collection of double-wides. The odd thing, though, was that the trailers closest to the water were burned out and abandoned:

This is just the closest one. It doesn't seem to resemble a meth lab explosion, more like a regular fire, but I'm not a forensic expert:

Here's another wrecked out domicile:

And here all that's left is a ratty couch and the chimney:

Another place with the copper wires all stripped, but this one didn't really seem like a double-wide:

One more eerie shot before we head to the water's edge---a series of dead palms trees:

The beach was crunchy, like brittle fresh snow, but was made of fish bones and tiny puka-like shells:

Here's a cool scary shot of the sea and a love seat...

Okay, so, a few words about the Stench, and the tilapia die-off.

There was a cloud of funky smell that floated in on the greater LA area (we didn't get it in the LBC), and it was eventually determined that it was a Salton Sea fish die-off that had caused it. The die-offs are caused by large algae blooms that take up all the oxygen and choke out the fish. They happen regularly over the course of the sea's life.

Currently the salinity is a bigger problem than the algae blooms, beside the stench of the dead fish. The salinity's growing regularly due to the salinity levels in the feeder streams and rivers, though their salt levels should be a point of concern as well.

The edge of the sea had an odd foam, and it some parts you could see where the foam had dried after it was left during a tidal change.

At one point the beach had thousands of balls of fishy crud that was soft like dog droppings. I imagine it was the algae having been rolled through the lapping wave action over the shore, but I'm not sure, and this was as close as I came to handling it:

Dead fish:

There weren't any flies, and it seemed almost too salty to have any bacteria also (there had to be some, right?), and the fish just seemed to be drying out instead of decomposing.

At an old school dock the effect of long term salted air exposure was quite noticeable:

More fish piled up. The smell was nearly unbearable, which meant they had to be decomposing somewhat.

We stopped at another spot south of Shoreline Village called Western Shore. Google maps had said that it was actually called Salton City. A desolate intersection cracked me up: how would like to meet at the corner of Sea Elf and Treasure?