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Description

This is the Salton Sea in Southern California, one of the several huge salt sinks in the western United States. I thought I knew the story, right? Crazy engineer guy wants to up water irrigation of both California and Mexico sides of the valley, international fights over who owns what portion of the Colorado River, some ill-thought-out canals that silted up and overtopped and boom! You have the Salton Sea, all of the sudden. Fast forward past the 50’s where it became a beach resort and you’ve got this toxic salt soup that no fish can live in that’s just sitting there, evaporating slowly and poisoning everything around it. Not quite. Here’s some things I didn’t know:
Wasn’t the first time a sea formed in the Salton Sink, and the largest flood-in was 28 times bigger than the 1905 flooding.
Wasn’t even the first time the Colorado was diverted into canals to support valley agriculture, that honor belongs to the Cahuilla Indian tribes way back a thousand years ago.
The canal didn’t fail in 1905, it was deliberately opened up to divert around a silted portion to make repairs.
The mass die offs of fish and birds from the 90s stopped when the Salton Sea underwent a massive cleanup and restoration project and now that the lake is managed, both levels and wildlife have stabilized.
Far from not being able to eat the fish, Tilapia from the Salton sea provide a huge tonnage of meat for consumption every year and it’s commercially fished. (Good old tilapia can live literally anywhere I guess)
saltonseaauthority.org/get-inf…
There’s still lots of fish skeletons around the lake though. I didn’t paint them in. Instead I painted in one of those wonders of the desert: a Haboob. Apparently they’ve got dust issues down at Salton Sea, just like practically every other desert and big old storms roll through when thunderheads collapse further away across the plain. It’s truly awe inspiring and not a little bit terrifying to watch a haboob roll over you. Phoenix tends to get hit with one at least once or twice a year. The wonders of nature never cease.
And the party on Eynhallow is going strong.

Description

This is the Salton Sea in Southern California, one of the several huge salt sinks in the western United States. I thought I knew the story, right? Crazy engineer guy wants to up water irrigation of both California and Mexico sides of the valley, international fights over who owns what portion of the Colorado River, some ill-thought-out canals that silted up and overtopped and boom! You have the Salton Sea, all of the sudden. Fast forward past the 50’s where it became a beach resort and you’ve got this toxic salt soup that no fish can live in that’s just sitting there, evaporating slowly and poisoning everything around it. Not quite. Here’s some things I didn’t know:
Wasn’t the first time a sea formed in the Salton Sink, and the largest flood-in was 28 times bigger than the 1905 flooding.
Wasn’t even the first time the Colorado was diverted into canals to support valley agriculture, that honor belongs to the Cahuilla Indian tribes way back a thousand years ago.
The canal didn’t fail in 1905, it was deliberately opened up to divert around a silted portion to make repairs.
The mass die offs of fish and birds from the 90s stopped when the Salton Sea underwent a massive cleanup and restoration project and now that the lake is managed, both levels and wildlife have stabilized.
Far from not being able to eat the fish, Tilapia from the Salton sea provide a huge tonnage of meat for consumption every year and it’s commercially fished. (Good old tilapia can live literally anywhere I guess)
saltonseaauthority.org/get-inf…
There’s still lots of fish skeletons around the lake though. I didn’t paint them in. Instead I painted in one of those wonders of the desert: a Haboob. Apparently they’ve got dust issues down at Salton Sea, just like practically every other desert and big old storms roll through when thunderheads collapse further away across the plain. It’s truly awe inspiring and not a little bit terrifying to watch a haboob roll over you. Phoenix tends to get hit with one at least once or twice a year. The wonders of nature never cease.
And the party on Eynhallow is going strong.