Shark Bay, Australia

Credit: NASA/JSC, Posted on: Monday, 29 November 2004, 08:19 CST Download full size image

This image shows large solar salt works developed in Useless Loop and Useless Inlet, Shark Bay, western Australia (for a regional image of Shark Bay, see Phytoplankton in Shark Bay ). The salt (sodium chloride) is produced when ponds are repeatedly flooded with seawater, which is progressively concentrated by evaporation. This particular salt farm opened in 1967 and expanded operations in the 1990s. Today, this salt farm comprises over 50 ponds’the newest pond is the outermost pond in Useless Inlet, which provides the first evaporation cycle to increase the salinity of the water prior to entering the next pond. Complex chemical and biological adjustments occur in the system each time the configuration of ponds is changed.

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