The Salton Sea: "The French Riviera of California"

Once a thriving resort for celebrities and tourists, the Salton Sea was known as "The French Riviera of California."  The sea was California's oasis of abundant biodiversity in the 60's and 70's. Now, this once thriving hot-spot for the rich and famous shows remnants of an ecological and economic disaster. Located in the southeastern side of California and considered to be the state's largest lake, the Salton Sea sits on a desert basin known as the Salton Sink. Its inflow carries abundant nutrients such as salt, phosphates and nitrates, 90% of which are from agricultural runoff from the surrounding Imperial, Coachella, and Mexicali Valleys. The Salton Sea is an accidental result of an ill-constructed irrigation system of the Colorado River, causing water to flood the nearby communities and farmland.

Did I mention ecological disaster? As I stepped out of my car in rice-paper thin sandals, I immediately felt the rough sand jabbing the bottom of my feet like shards of glass. Enduring a dozen further paces, I grabbed a handful of sand to examine more closely. An imminent cloud of shock overwhelmed my senses. In my hand were bizarre-looking pebbles, relatively uniform in sizes. Immediately, I identified them to be calcified bits of barnacles, beautiful in forms yet jaw dropping to see. At that moment, it occurred to me that the entire beach was littered with barnacles. I would equate that same feeling to that which was conveyed in the movie, Red Planet, when the scientists and bio-engineers discovered the green phosphorescent patch of land they were standing on was filled with flesh eating arthropods. Admittedly, I freaked out a little. OKAY, I freaked out a lot! However, not being squeamish by nature, I kept my composure and examined further. All around me were thousands of dried-up fish bits. My first instinct was that the fish were looking very suspiciously like talapia. But weren't talapia fresh-water fish? And doesn't "Salton Sea" imply salt water by name? I didn't want to assume anything more at that point and told myself to concentrate on collecting more evidence and leave emotions out. Pushing on, I thought what did it matter anyway as to what type of fish they were other than that they were all dead! And in LARGE quantities no less! I forced focus on the matter at hand and assessed the potentially dangerous situation I might be in.




Logic told me there must have been an infestation, a deadly disease...a kind of environmental poison so toxic to have devastated a large number of fish and so apocalyptic that it annihilated the talapia species, littering many of their dried-up carcasses all over the shore. Evidently, there were countless of fish parts: heads with hollowed eyes, tails and fins, full skeletons, partial bones, fused cartilage and scaly skin. My heart skipped a couple more beats after seeing a well-preserved pelican's head with its eyes strained open. Just a few feet away was another haunting image of a talapia with its body partially emerged from the sand while its mouth gaping wide open, taunting us that its death was met without closure.

The more I observed, the more I saw fish and bird parts scattered in all directions. The larger chunks were discolored wings, torn feathers and leg bones belonging to the pelicans. What I initially saw from afar to be rocks and pebbles were actually countless of bird and fish remains. If I were a scientist venturing out into an uncharted territory and stumbled upon a place like this, I would quickly button my white coat all the way up to the base of my skull, tuck away all stray hair into a well-sealed cap, stuff my sleeves and leg pant openings into heavy duty gloves and knee-high boots, and put on an industrial strength hepa filter mask before venturing out further. Of course, as I was unprepared for such things and with extreme curiosity and perversion driving me, I made my way deeper out toward the shore to see if I could make more sense of this bizarre, out-of-this-world place.

Further observation showed that some healthy wildlife still existed in this fragile ecosystem. Evidence of water fowls fluttering in the distant and soaring majestically above the sky calmed my nerves. They were smaller game birds and the more identifiable California white pelicans. Then there were the common house flies (not too many, but enough to be pesty nonetheless). With the shore desiccated from the blazing sun, coupled with the sand's scorching heat seeping through my thin sandals, I became all too aware of the stench of rotten flesh, although logic told me that the worst had passed long ago. Maybe, given a little more time, the Salton Sea may recover from its tragic disaster and mend itself. Should I were to listen to the cries of its inhabitants, I would see that the balance scale had been rectified and leveled off just enough for the little natives to fight on and to survive. For now, the sea remains eerily calm, neither accepting nor rejecting, but is more at peace with its warring self.

Additionally, I was relieved about the lack of humidity in the air. Should any nasty bugs in the vicinity decide to flea-hop their way over and make me their new host, they would be more challenged from the dry, salty air. Then again, I wasn't going to test my theory for my bravery had reached its limit. I fired off my camera, documentary style, and hurried off the premise. Better to be safe than sorry.

As we drove around this ghostly town, I saw further testimony of what was once a luxury spot judging from the weather damaged palm trees, rusted street names, dried up swimming pools and abandoned million-dollar views. Apparently, from further research, the Salton Sea was once a freshwater lake in the 1920's but by the 1970's, the salt level began rising, bringing with it a destruction so immense that it wiped out the entire town. In addition to the heavy salt content in the water, the pesticides and industrial wastes from the surrounding areas inevitably wiped out most of the native species that depended heavily on the water to survive. As a result, the various species of fish, their offspring and the birds that depended on those fish for food were dying off by the millions! Today, the resulting neighborhood is a sleepy town with a few scattered homes sitting on nutrient depleted soil. I did see a few commercial watermelon patches nearby, but nothing to write more about. From my readings, I learned that tilapia are the few remaining fish strong enough to survive the high salinity in the water and that they can be fished and consumed safely today.