A pond in Ethiopia's Danakil Depression has a measured salinity of 433 grams per kilogram — roughly twelve times saltier than the open ocean and saltier than the Dead Sea — sitting inside one of the h

Scientists have found a pond so saturated with salt that nothing we know should survive in it—yet life does.

Published September 16, 2026 · How we edit

Near the base of the Dallol hydrothermal field in Ethiopia’s Afar region sits a pond barely 60 meters long, its water tinted pale yellow by dissolved iron. Chemists who sampled it found a total dissolved solids concentration of 433 grams per kilogram — 43.3 percent by weight — making it, by current measurement, the record for saltiest lake documented anywhere on Earth. The pond is known locally as Gaet’ale, and the figure comes from a 2017 study by Pérez and Chebude of Addis Ababa University’s Department of Chemistry, published in the journal Aquatic Geochemistry.