Pelicans fishing in Great Salt Lake.

American white pelicans fishing in Farmington Bay of Great Salt Lake.

A few weeks ago, while laying on the shore of Great Salt Lake, I kept hearing tiny splashes next to me in the water. A sneaky grebe? Giant mosquitos? No!! Fish. Tiny fish, jumping for flies.

If you know about Great Salt Lake, you know that it’s supposed to be too salty for fish. But because of extreme low water levels, water is now only flowing one way under the causeway dividing two bays of the lake. That means that the fresh water coming in from the south is not mixing with salt water in the north, and it is now apparently fresh enough to support fish.

Recently, a whole bunch of fishing birds have discovered that fact. Today I saw Terns, Great Blue Heron, Snowy Egret, Cormorants, and these American White Pelicans, all fishing in what I suppose is really now just the Jordan River estuary. I’m still calling it Great Salt Lake.

Fun fact: Gunnison island in Great Salt Lake hosts one of the worlds largest nesting colonies of American White Pelicans. They favor Gunnison island for nesting because it is remote and isolated, but it’s in the hyper-saline north arm of the lake, where no fish can live. The pelicans fly at least thirty miles across the lake each day to the wetlands where they fish, and then fly back to Gunnison Island to feed their great big hungry chicks. These birds were about 40 miles one way from Gunnison Island.