The lowest place on Earth at 427m below sea level – a sea below the sea. And water that is roughly one third salt, a salinity 10 times that of almost any ocean.
That’s the Dead Sea, a place to which tourists flock, and not just for the inevitable pictures of them reading a book.
The high concentration of salts and minerals, which make life almost impossible within the sea itself, have given birth to a wellness industry, with mud baths and scrubs believed to remedy conditions such as arthritis, eczema and psoriasis.
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Though it may look simple, swimming in the Dead Sea is not child’s play. Would be bathers are warned not to swallow any water which can cause nausea and even respiratory difficulties. (You can’t drink even normal sea water in any quantity without becoming sick because of the high salt content.)
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And despite its famous buoyancy, people do drown here. Strong winds can blow them into deeper waters, where they struggle to remain afloat.
Does anything live in the Dead Sea?
Is the Dead Sea really dead? Well, not completely. Microscopic organisms that have evolved to thrive in the presence of extreme salinity can be found in here in abundance, including one that can bloom during the summer months and lend it a reddish tinge. There’s also a green micro alga called Dunaliella.
Freshwater springs at the bottom of the Dead Sea give rise to colonies of cyanobacteria and green sulphur bacteria. There are also 80 species of fungi on the sea bed.
The Dead Sea is located within the Jordan Rift valley, and this is an important migration route for numerous birds including white storks, honey buzzards and lesser-spotted eagles which pass through here on their way to and from Africa every autumn and spring.
Overlooking the Dead Sea on the Israeli side is Ein Gedi Nature Reserve, and here you will find Nubian ibex, jackals, rock hyraxes and the small but reasonably common dorcas gazelles. Watch out for the fat-tailed scorpions, which are aggressive and whose sting is potentially fatal, but they are only active at night.
Strangely, the salt rich mud from the Dead Sea was used by the ancient Egyptians to embalm their dead, helping to desiccate and preserve their bodies – as if giving them life so that people of the present can better understand the past.
But the Dead Sea is dying. It has diminished from just over 1,000km2 in the 1930s to 600km2 today, and the water level drops by 1m every year. It’s said that the world is a shrinking oyster, savour it while you can – the same appears to be true of the Dead Sea.
