Like cellophane flowers and girls with kaleidoscope eyes, pink lakes are the stuff of 1960s pop songs and hallucinogenic experiences. Except that you can visit one in real life while stone-cold sober.
Where can I find pink lakes?
There’s a pink lake in the Camargue of France, one in Azerbaijan, a couple in Ukraine, and Australia has quite a lot of them.
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Why are pink lakes - well - pink?
As stunning and otherworldly as they surely are, there’s something unsettling about them, too – the
sort of thing one might expect in the aftermath of a chemical spillage. But there’s nothing unnatural about them.
Pink lakes are usually ‘terminal’ lakes, meaning they have no outflow. Water can only leave by evaporation, which leaves behind its mineral content.
This leads to an unusually high salt content, often much saltier than the oceans, which provides a habitat for specialist salt-tolerant algae and bacteria.
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Many of these manufacture carotenoids, a class of colourful chemical compounds that also give carrots, beetroot and flamingos their hues. Carotenoids play a role in photosynthesis and also help protect the micro-organisms’ DNA in these extreme environments.
The pink water is a visually pleasing side-effect.
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