2/17/2023 0 Comments Lake natron factsI took these creatures as I found them on the shoreline, and then placed them in ‘living’ positions, bringing them back to ‘life’, as it were. The soda and salt causes the creatures to calcify, perfectly preserved, as they dry. The water has an extremely high soda and salt content, so high that it would strip the ink off my Kodak film boxes within a few seconds. No-one knows for certain exactly how they die, but it appears that the extreme reflective nature of the lake’s surface confuses them, and like birds crashing into plate glass windows, they crash into the lake. The alkalinity of the water comes from sodium carbonate and other minerals that flow from the active volcano, Ol Doinyo Lengai. Its so caustic that it can burn the skin and eyes of animals that are not adapted to it. Nick Brandt wrote in his blog about this- "I unexpectedly found the creatures – all manner of birds and bats – washed up along the shoreline of Lake Natron in Northern Tanzania. The alkaline water in Lake Natron has a pH as high as 10.5, and the temperature can reach up to 60 ☌. Birds and other animals that come in contact with the lake’s waters – often by mistake – die and get mummified into stones. And for this reason it burns the skin upon contact and gradually turn the animals into solid state. Actually the PH level of the water of the lake is extremely higher (about 10.5). Lake Natron does not have an outflow, so its evaporation levels are very high, and this has resulted in the build-up of natron and trona. It is not a very deep lake and only reaches depths of three meters (9.8 feet), which is very shallow compared to other lakes in the Eastern Rift Valley, such as Lake Tanganyika, estimated to be about five hundred and seventy meters (1,890 feet) deep. Located in northern Tanzania, near the border with neighbouring Kenya, Lake Natron is a salt lake which is situated north east of the Ngorongoro Crater. It's absolutely amazing that there is a lake in Tanzania where animals turn into stone. Lake Natron measures 56 km (35 miles) long and 24 km (15 miles) wide.
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