Hi, everyone. Our class just finished watching a documentary about the Dead Sea. We learned a lot of cool stuff about it. Did you know that people go there just to smear mud all over themselves? I’ll tell you more about that in a minute!
The Dead Sea, in case you don't know, is actually a lake in the Middle East. At four hundred meters below sea level, it's the lowest point on Earth. But we found out that it's mostly famous for all the salt and minerals it contains. The water in the Dead Sea is almost six times saltier than ocean water!
The Dead Sea lies between the borders of Jordan, Israel, and the West Bank. It’s about 80 kilometers long, 11 kilometers wide at its widest point, and 377 meters deep at its deepest. The lake is surrounded by hot, dry desert on all sides, and it's located in an area known as the Dead Sea Depression.
I didn't know what a depression was until Mr. Fay explained that it's a low-lying area caused by something called a rift. A rift occurs when two plates of the earth's crust move apart. The land between them gets stretched thinner and thinner. And as the land gets thinner, it sinks, creating a depression.
Maybe you're wondering, just like I was, how the Dead Sea got so salty. Well, the depression sits so low that water from all the nearby rivers drains into it. This water is filled with salt and minerals. And since the depression is lower than all the surrounding land, the water can never drain back out; it can only evaporate. And that's what happens—water constantly evaporates. In fact, so much water is evaporating from the Dead Sea, it often looks like there's a cloud of fog hanging over the lake. (That's pretty creepy when you think about the Dead Sea's name, huh?) Anyway, as the water evaporates, it leaves behind the salt and minerals.
Now I can tell you why people go to the Dead Sea to cover themselves from head to toe with its mud! All the minerals that get deposited into the lake sink down into the mud at the bottom. And those minerals are supposed to be really good for your skin. No wonder lots of spas and health resorts have been built in the area.
After hearing so much about the Dead Sea's health benefits, I wanted to know why it has such a grim name. According to the documentary we watched in class, the water in the Dead Sea is so salty that almost nothing can live there, except for bacteria and one type of algae. Any fish or freshwater animal that gets washed into the lake dies almost instantly. And the shores are covered in thick salt crystals, so animals can’t even survive near the lake either.
But don’t worry; the water is totally safe for people. You can even go swimming there if you want, although it's pretty hard to swim because all that salt makes it much easier to float! In fact, that movie showed people sitting up and reading in the Dead Sea, as if they were sitting in chairs. It was unbelievable!
The Dead Sea also has an important place in history. It's mentioned in the Bible, and there are stories about Queen Cleopatra traveling to the lake to bathe. It's also where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. These ancient manuscripts, which were made from papyrus, leather, and copper, were found in 1947 in caves near the lake’s shore. They're the oldest known copies of the Old Testament, dating all the way back to the third and first centuries BC.
Unfortunately, like many other beautiful and historic places in the world, the Dead Sea's existence is threatened. Over the last thirty years or so, its water level has dropped by nearly one meter a year, and it has lost almost a third of its surface area. This is because the waters of its main source—the Jordan River—are being diverted. The countries of Israel, Syria, and Jordan are diverting fresh water from the Jordan River in order to farm and provide drinking water to people living in cities. Israel and Jordan also deliberately evaporate large pools of water just to extract the Dead Sea's minerals.
The scientists in the movie think the depression itself is sinking every year too. Some scientists think the rift is the cause. Others believe that the sinking is due to changes in the ground's composition. Either way the lake is reported to sink about 33 centimeters every year!
Sadly Mr. Fay said that the countries around the Dead Sea don't have the greatest relations right now. That makes it very difficult for environmentalists to come together and try to help the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. But I hope they do. I want to try floating there someday!
After we watched the movie about the Dead Sea, Alex and I came up with a great idea for a project: our class can write letters to environmental protection groups asking them to support the conservation of the Jordan River. This will help to save the "dying" Dead Sea.
The movie definitely gave me a lot of facts for my letter. But I still have more research to do, so I'd better go now. See you next time!