geography

Bathers famously float without effort in its salt-saturated water, which sits far below sea level on the border of Israel, Jordan, and the West Bank.

What is the Dead Sea best known as?

Q: What is the Dead Sea best known as?

The lowest point on Earth's land surface. The Dead Sea's shoreline sits about 1,410 feet below sea level, the lowest elevation on dry land, and its extreme salinity — nearly 10 times saltier than the ocean — is what makes swimmers so buoyant, and it's shrinking by roughly a meter a year as upstream water is diverted, exposing new, sinkhole-prone shoreline.

The lowest point on Earth's land surface ✓
The saltiest ocean on Earth
The largest freshwater lake in the Middle East

The lowest point on Earth's land surface
The Dead Sea's shoreline sits about 1,410 feet below sea level, the lowest elevation on dry land, and its extreme salinity — nearly 10 times saltier than the ocean — is what makes swimmers so buoyant, and it's shrinking by roughly a meter a year as upstream water is diverted, exposing new, sinkhole-prone shoreline.

The Dead Sea is best known as the lowest point on Earth's land surface, sitting roughly 1,400 feet below sea level on the border of Israel, Jordan, and the West Bank. Its water is so packed with dissolved salt and minerals, far saltier than any ocean, that the water becomes denser than the human body, which is why bathers float on the surface almost without trying.

It is not the saltiest ocean, since it is not an ocean at all but a landlocked lake, and it is not a freshwater lake either, since its defining feature is the opposite: extreme salinity from minerals that have concentrated there for thousands of years with no outlet to drain them away.

The Dead Sea is shrinking noticeably each year as rivers that used to feed it are diverted for farming and drinking water, and its retreating shoreline has left behind sinkholes where underground salt deposits dissolve and collapse.

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