The Pink Lake
Lake Retba
A very salty lagoon near Dakar that can turn pink, where workers gather salt from the lake bed by hand.
Why Lake Retba is lake pink
Lake Retba, known in French as Lac Rose, lies north-east of Dakar, separated from the Atlantic by a line of dunes. Its water is extremely salty, in places as salty as the Dead Sea. A tiny alga that thrives in salt water makes a red pigment to protect itself from sunlight, and when it is plentiful the lake turns pink. The colour is strongest in the dry season, in sun and wind, and can be faint or absent at other times. Men wade into the lake to break salt from the bottom, and women carry it ashore, where it is piled in white heaps. Heavy floods in 2022 diluted the lake and dulled its colour for a time.
Values are fair approximations of what the eye sees there, not measurements.
Colours tied to Lake Retba
Written by the Rang desk with AI assistance. Background: "Lake Retba" on Wikipedia. If you know Lake Retba and we have it wrong, tell us.
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The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Jaipur In: Chainwit., CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Vrindavan In: Biswarup Ganguly, CC BY 3.0, source
- Dhaka Bd: Tanweer drmc, Public domain, source
- Shiraz Ir: آرش (Arche), CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Saint Louis Sn: Remi Jouan, CC BY 3.0, source