Why is the Dead Sea so much saltier than any other

A.� The Dead Sea, in Jordan, is one of the world’s saltiest bodies of water, six times as salty as most oceans. Basically, oceans become salty through two actions:

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rivers, carrying mineral salts, feed into them,

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water evaporates from the seas, leaving the mineral salts behind.

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To read more about why the world’s oceans are salty click here.

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Q.� But most seas don’t have an outlet!

A.� True, which exacerbates their saltiness however the Dead Sea is different: the hot dry climate results in greater evaporation and so, higher concentrations of salts.

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Q.� And is it really dead

A.� Yes, nothing lives in it, no seaweed, no fish, nothing. The very salty conditions in the Dead Sea happened so quickly that no living organism had chance to evolve mechanisms to cope and survive.

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Not only can nothing live in the Dead Sea but it actually instantly kills anything that is unlucky enough to find its way there. Any fish that swims in from the freshwater streams feeding the Dead Sea is killed and becomes preserved in a layer of salt crystals.

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Q.� But humans swim in it

A.� Yes we do. But unlike fish we’re not dependent on the water to allow us to breathe, in fact all we really do is float on the top due to the buoyancy provided by the high salt concentration.

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Q.� What Caused the Dead Sea to form

A.� The Dead Sea is located over the Rift Valley, an area where two of the planets plates are moving apart, stretching the Earth’s crust thin as they do so.

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As the crust thins the overlying surface sinks. The Dead Sea formed in this depression. As the plates move the Dead Sea lowers by as much as 30 centimetres per year.

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Do you want to know why something is different Click here to ask.

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by Lisa Cardy