Flying over Great Salt Lake with EcoFlight

Today I got in a very small airplane and flew over Great Salt Lake. The organization I flew with was EcoFlight https://ecoflight.org/, a conservation aviation non-profit that takes people up for the bird’s eye view of areas in need of conservation. The views were stunning and also sobering. The lake, and now the dry lakebed, is big enough that even from the air you can’t take it all in. I think you need to go to space to truly see the whole picture. Nonetheless, her majesty is hard to deny. Here are a few snaps from the flight.

Fremont Island. An expanse of dry lakebed advances toward Fremont Island from the east and a land bridge revealed by low water is visible.

Aerial view of Antelope Island from the North. Dry and bleached microbialites can be seen in front of the island, and submerged microbialites can be seen in shallow water in the foreground.

A railroad causeway divides the lake into two arms, north and south. To the north, the water is pink and devoid of bird-sustaining invertebrates due to its extreme high salt concentration. The south arm is still blue or green, but is in danger of becoming hypersaline as its fresh water tributaries dry up. An exposed section of the Behren’s trench, normally submerged, is visible as a pink line running roughly parallel to the railroad causeway.

Pink water and seafoam in the hypersaline north arm of Great Salt Lake. The water is pink because the only organisms that can survive here - extreme salt-loving microbes - are pink. The north arm is truly a dead sea - microbialites, brine flies, brine shrimp, and birds do not thrive here.