Turkish Lake Turns Blood Red

Fact checked
blood red
AKSARAY, TURKEY - JULY 16: A view from the "Salt Lake" in Aksaray, Turkey on July 16, 2015. Dunaliella salinas, a type of halophile micro-algae especially found in sea/lake salt fields, colorize a part of the lake this season of the year. (Photo by Murat Oner Tas/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Tuz Gola, a lake in Turkey has turned blood red.  If you ever find yourself happening upon a lake such as this, do not worry.

According to CNET [1]:

If you find yourself in such a setting, don’t panic. The apocalypse isn’t coming to fruition. You’re probably just vacationing in Aksaray, Turkey, where the country’s second-largest lake, Tuz Gola, also known by the locals as “Salt Lake,” turns bright red due to an interesting anomaly that occurs every summer.

Christopher Gobler, a marine ecology research professor for Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences in Stony Brook, New York, told ABC News that a species of algae called Dunaliella salinas is responsible for the lake’s ruddy color.

Gobler says that when a sizable amount of the water is sucked out of the lake due to evaporation, it raises the salt level and kills off a large portion of the plankton that eat the color-changing algae in the lake. The algae’s population grows and causes the water to change to its bright red color. These algae are also responsible for putting the “pink” in the pink flamingos in the lake.

The lake will retain its strange color until all of the water evaporates sometime in August, leaving behind a dry salt pan. The lake will then fill up with water again during the winter, according to ABC’s report.

Tuz Gola isn’t the only body of water in the world with an unusual color, according to a gallery of photos compiled by Conde Nast Traveler [2]. Laguna Colorada in Uyuni, Bolivia, has a lake that turns red in the summer in a similar cycle to Tuz Gola. Lake Hillier located in western Australia has waters that are bright pink. Yellowstone National Park’s Grand Prismatic Spring in Wyoming has bacteria in it that turn the water into a rainbow of different colors.

Sources:

[1] http://www.cnet.com/news/lake-in-turkey-turns-blood-red/

[2] http://www.cntraveler.com/galleries/2014-10-03/australia-s-pink-lake-and-other-oddly-colored-bodies-of-water

Royce Christyn

Royce Christyn

Journalist at News Punch
Documentarian, Writer, Producer, Director, Author.
Royce Christyn

4 Comments

  1. You should verify your spelling before writing an article. It is Tuz Golu not Tuz Gola. Actual Turkish spelling is Tuz Gölü.

  2. You should verify your spelling before writing an article. It is Tuz Golu not Tuz Gola. Actual Turkish spelling is Tuz Gölü.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.




This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.