10 facts about the very dangerous Lake Natron in Tanzania (4 photos)

This lake seems to have come down to earth from a horror movie! And the appearance fully justifies itself. Local residents try to stay away from the terrible lake.





The water from Lake Natron in Tanzania literally eats away at your skin as soon as you touch it. If you swim here even a little, your skin will become covered with blisters and burns.

The beautiful crust consists of an extremely aggressive alkaline mineral with a pH of almost 12! This is almost twice the healthy level for humans. And higher than ammonia, which has a pH of only 11.

Small animals that inadvertently go down to the water rarely survive even a small contact with water.

The rain that falls in these places is called ghostly. Because most of it evaporates before reaching the surface.



Water does not flow out of Lake Natron. One river flows into it, and it receives most of its water from springs and small streams. However, the water seeps through the volcanic material, where it becomes enriched with alkali.

Lake Natron contains a lot of salt, soda and magnesite. The surface of the lake is covered with a thin crust of salt.

The water here is not always so red. It is colored due to the activity of microorganisms that thrive in this very salty water.

This phenomenon is not constant. This happens only when the water evaporates and the lake becomes maximally saturated with alkaline salt - the favorite environment of local microorganisms.





The lake has fresh and salty parts. But a future dam could destroy the salty part of the lake

Bacteria multiply here - they don’t care about this composition. The main reason for the death of local animals is bacteria that enter the body along with water. The only representative of the local fauna who is not afraid of these bacteria is the flamingo.

This is an ideal place for flamingos. They feed on local algae, and the "red water" acts as a barrier to predators. Therefore, almost no one hunts flamingos here.

Even fish manage to survive here - two species of tilapia have adapted to this water.

The water in the lake is very hot - the temperature sometimes rises to 50 ° C. The hot springs are to blame.

However, this unique natural site has every chance of disappearing from the face of the earth.



The authorities here are planning to build a hydroelectric power station and a dam. The salty part of the lake may disappear as it is flooded with fresh water.

They want to use salt water to extract potassium carbonate and process it into washing powder.

These initiatives pose a danger to small flamingos. It turns out that 75% of these birds are born on the shores of this lake.