Salton Sea and More

Last Tuesday, my friend Amir and I went location scouting around Salton Sea and we had a great trip.  The following pictures document that day.

We mainly stayed in and around Bombay Beach to start things rolling...

Salton Sea is a really weird place. When you are driving to it and by it, when you are far away from the "beach" but close enough to see it, The water is a pristine blue. The little communities around it are semi-abandoned, which kind of gives a way what awaits for you by the shore. The environmental problems (both natural and man-made) caused the salt level to go all the way up to 4% and an algal bloom, which in turn increased the bacteria level. These two factors are deadly for most fish species and that's what you see all over the beaches of the Salton Sea.

The "death" is not only affecting the fish species...

The eerie silence all around Bombay Beach (save it for a very loud black-necked stilt that followed us for a while), the smell, the smoldering heat made us wondered how the few people were still choosing to live in this half-deserted desert town by the "sea".

Of course, life was obviously present in the forms of tons of birds (Salton Sea is famous for bird watching), those few people I was talking about and these fire ants.

After the Bombay Beach, we continued our scouting journey and we ended up 20mn from the US-Mexico border at the Salvation Mountain, created by Leonard Knight.

We also took this opportunity to photograph the beautiful wife of Amir :o)

Next week may be all about Salton Sea as well, this time, with models. Stay tuned.