Sinkholes on receding Dead Sea shore mark 'nature's revenge'

A spectacular expanse of water in the desert, flanked by cliffs to east and west, the Dead Sea has lost a third of its surface area since 1960.

Claire Gounon (AFP)

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Ein Gedi, Israel

Wed, October 27, 2021

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Hikers walk next to sinkholes across a dried-up sea area which exposed and created a salt plain, some 20 Km south of the Israeli Kibbutz Ein Gedi in the southern part of the Dead Sea, on January 15, 2021. A spectacular expanse of water in the desert, flanked by cliffs to east and west, the Dead Sea has lost a third of its surface area since 1960. The blue water recedes about a metre (yard) every year, leaving behind a lunar landscape whitened by salt and perforated with gaping holes. (AFP/Menahem Kahana)

In the heyday of the Ein Gedi spa in the 1960s, holidaymakers could marinate in heated pools and then slip into the briny Dead Sea. Now the same beach is punctured by craters.

A spectacular expanse of water in the desert, flanked by cliffs to east and west, the Dead Sea has lost a third of its surface area since 1960.

The blue water recedes about a meter (yard) every year, leaving behind a lunar landscape whitened by salt and perforated with gaping holes.

Going forward, "you might be lucky to have a channel of water here, that people will be able to put their toes in," laments Alison Ron, a resident of Ein Gedi who once worked at the spa.

"But there will be a lot of sinkholes."

The sinkholes can exceed 10 metres (33 feet) in depth and are a testament to the shrinking sea. Receding salt water leaves behind underground salt deposits. Runoff from periodic flash floods then percolates into the ground and dissolves the salt patches. Without support, the land above collapses.

Ghost town