Four feet a year: How the Dead Sea is running out of water

The Dead Sea sits where Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian land meet, and almost everything about it runs to extremes. At around 1,400 feet below sea level, it is the lowest point on the planet. Its water is nearly 10 times saltier than the ocean, so dense that a person can lie back and float without any effort. For many visitors, that is the whole appeal.But the water they float on is going away. Every year the sea recedes by around 4 feet. Over the past five decades, its surface area has shrunk by roughly a third. What the retreating water leaves behind is a new landscape of salt-encrusted shorelines and sinkholes, striking to look at and, increasingly, risky to stand on.A lake that is called a seaTechnically, the Dead Sea is a lake.