Sunday, September 7, 2014

Salton Sea

The Salton Sea is a big body of water that sits in the middle of the desert in Southern California. I learned something very interesting about it last week. I always thought it was the result of some ancient sea or something but it turns out that it is actually the result of an engineering mistake back in the 1940s. Some engineers were trying to divert a river to agricultural land and ended up filling up a desert basin that sits below sea level with water! Their mistake has lasted far longer than they imagined. You can see the large expanse of water here that hosts thousands of pelicans and gulls.

Pelicans and Gulls
Although the scene looks idyllic, the sea has had problems from the start. There were once vacation homes and marinas and lots of fishing, boating and swimming here. But not today. Here is the marina and boat ramp - dry as a bone.

Salton Sea Boat Ramp
We parked here and had to walk a few hundred yards out to the water's edge. The place is desolate.

Desolation
The water cannot sustain as many fish now that it has evaporated. Back in the '60s, the fish all died at once. The stench drove people away. They abandoned their vacation homes, pulled their boats and split. Dead fish are still visible along the beach.

Dead Fish
But there are also really neat birds here too like this Snowy Plover. This little guy didn't seem to mind my presence on the desolate beach.

Snowy Plover
At one point, he walked right toward me! 

Snowy Plover
Other birds such as these Avocets are plentiful around the sea. Here are 2 coming in for a landing.

American Avocets
American Avocets
This Caspian Tern was cruising the coast line.

Caspian Tern
American White Pelicans were all over the place. This huge pelican soars very high like a hawk. Here is one taking off right overhead.

American White Pelican
The Salton Sea is one of the only places in the US to see Yellow-footed Gull. We saw a few including this one sitting with Black Terns.

Yellow-footed Gull
Oh, did I mention that it gets hot here - like 111 degree hot? That's not a typo - 111 degrees. We started the day at 76 degrees,  it was 100 by 10:30 AM and triple 1s by the time we quit at 1:30.. I was lucky enough not to have a hot flash or I might have vaporized on the spot - POOF and I could have spontaneously combusted! Good thing they had cold beer at the burger joint.

Cold Beer!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The beer may be cold, but it looks "used"! Still have many hummers, but some are doing their "good-bye" dance in front of the window. HH

Randy Brown said...

Great pics, but a few points of correction:
The Salton Sea was formed between 1905 and 1907 when that engineering screwup happened.
Salton Sea did not have problems from the start. Things actually were going quite well up until the late 1970's when several El Nino seasons caused the sea to flood.. then, a double-whammy, a few years later, it started to recede resulting in the piers to nowhere and boat-ramps in the sand that we see now..
The fish did not die all at once in the 1960s.. As a matter of fact, it was a prime fishing location up until the mid 1980's when we started seeing large fish-dieoffs due to the rising salinity and alge-blooms that sucked all of the oxygen out of the water, suffocating the fish.. These days, because of the high salt levels only one or two species of fish remain (mostly Tilapia).. but there are still millions of them, even though millions still die most years and wash up on shore.

yes, lot's of birds and ohh yess.. it get's hot! I've been there on days that hit 122°F...

In June 2015 I will be attempting to be the first person to ever walk around the entire 116 miles of shoreline - follow along as I plan for this adventure and for the big-event itself at my website at www.SaltonSeaWalk.com

Linda said...

Thanks for the comments/corrections Randy. I was just too lazy to look up the actual facts and was relying on my memory too much. Besides, I thought the only readers of this blog were my mother and a few other relatives :-) Good luck on your journey. I hope you make it all the way around

Linda said...

Thanks for the comments/corrections Randy. I was just too lazy to look up the actual facts and was relying on my memory too much. Besides, I thought the only readers of this blog were my mother and a few other relatives :-) Good luck on your journey. I hope you make it all the way around