Discover the Mud Pots and Volcanoes of California's Salton Sea
Imagine if you will a place where the ground spews forth bubbling mud and steam. This apocalyptic scene could easily be mistaken for another planet. But it can be found in southern California, near an inland body of water called the Salton Sea, which is now famous for its mud pots and volcanoes.
The idea that this alien landscape was once a resort area may seem strange. But decades ago, the communities of Salton City and Bombay Beach were a playground of the rich and famous.
That changed, however, as the sea shrunk and became polluted with toxins, making it all but uninhabitable to most marine life. Any homes that survived the years are mostly (although not completely) abandoned by humans as well.
A Sea Now Strictly for Sightseers
Today, tourists visit the Salton Sea but not as vacationers so much as sightseers. That’s because its mud volcanoes are easily among the most peculiar sights and sounds you can experience anywhere
The Salton Sea is a landlocked lake around 35 miles long and 15 miles wide. Over many, many years, it filled with water and dried out again. Its most recent “filling” was 118 years ago when an irrigation canal being built was breached by floodwater from the Colorado River. All that water poured into what’s called the “Salton Sink” creating the present-day Salton Sea. The water level is now mostly maintained by runoff from farms.
As the Salton Sea is a “terminal” body of water, meaning it has no outlet, the water eventually evaporates, while salt accumulates. Because of that, along with ongoing agricultural pollution, it is saltier than the ocean, currently having a 50 percent greater salinity rate.
The lake was at one time not only a prime vacation destination but also an important wildlife habitat. Now, however, where “people here used to fish, swim, bring their boats, they went from living in paradise to living in hell,” Frank Ruiz, Audubon’s Salton Sea Program Director, told CNBC.
But the mud pots and volcanoes remain.
Moving Mud
Located directly over the southern tip of the 800-mile-long San Andreas fault, the Salton Sea is a hotspot for geothermal activity.
The mud pots and volcanoes exist because of that activity. Carbon dioxide gas, which vents around quake faults, creates a spitting “muddy cone.” Some of the mud just gurgles out, and some volcanoes can spew, geyser-like, as high as five feet.
The acidic nature of the mud, along with the microorganisms that thrive in it, is what breaks down rock into the gushing muck.
These bubbling pots and peaks, however, are not volcanic in origin as are the mud pots in Yellowstone National Park. Salton Sea volcanoes are also not true volcanoes, as they don’t spew lava. They’re more aptly called “mud volcanoes.”
Then there’s the case of the moving mud pot.
Its movement was first noticed in 2016, slowly advancing at a pace of around 20 feet a year. It appeared to be heading straight for a section of active Union Pacific railroad tracks.
Scientists still don’t know why it’s on the move or where it will go. Throughout its travels, however, it has advanced in a straight line, carving a 24,000-square-foot basin about 18 feet deep.
Mud Castles in the Desert
The Salton Sea mud pots are described as looking like “witches’ brews.” The bubbling sound is caused by the carbon dioxide erupting from below the water table. The steam seeps through vents created by earthquake faults. Despite the hot appearance of the mud bubbling below, however, it’s at the same temperature as the environment, which is relatively hot to begin with. (This is, after all, the desert!)
The “volcanoes” indeed resemble the real thing, although much smaller. The mud inside them is hotter, but still nowhere near as scorching as lava. The average temperature of the mud emanating from them is around 128 degrees Fahrenheit.
Like the castles of wet sand built by children at the beach, each time these volcanoes spit some mud out, it flows down the sides, dries, and makes the volcano wider. The U.S. Geological Survey researchers estimate these mud domes at the Salton Sea could have formed over 16,000 years ago.
The Lithium Lake
But the Salton Sea, as it turns out, could be resurrected economically for other reasons. Besides being the site of 11 energy-producing geothermal plants, some of which were commissioned back in the mid-1980s, it could be the location of California’s new “gold rush.”
Very large deposits of lithium have been found in the Salton Sea. This lightest of metals is now increasingly in demand for use in rechargeable batteries, especially for electric vehicles.
Mining lithium, however, is a dirty business. It disrupts wildlife and pollutes the air and water with a variety of chemicals and heavy metals. Companies that are investing heavily in the future of lithium extraction from the Salton Sea claim that, unlike typical mining methods, this will be less harmful to the environment.
Unfortunately, the Salton Sea itself is already a toxic mess.
Ghost Towns by the Sea
Not all that long ago the areas surrounding Salton Sea were primed to become exclusive resort communities.
The best known of all was Bombay Beach. In the 1950s this retreat was called “California’s Riviera,” attracting top celebrities of the day such as Frank Sinatra, the Beach Boys, and Jerry Lewis. There was a yacht club there, along with luxury hotels and plans for gorgeous homes.
An area called “Salton City,” on the opposite side of the sea from Bombay Beach was also being promoted as a haven for snowbirds, retirees, and investors. During just one day in 1958, M. Penn Phillips, a real estate developer, took in over $4 million in sales for half-acre lots in Salton City.
But the Shangri-La depicted in sales brochures never materialized. The sea was shrinking, and the smell of sulfur soon began to fill the air.
By the 1970s, continued agricultural runoffs into the Salton Sea had killed off most of the fish, leaving just two species that could tolerate the water.
Who Owns the Salton Sea?
Currently, the state of California has numerous projects in the works to try and remediate around 30,000 acres of the sea’s toxic shoreline. But considering the bizarre patchwork of ownership of the sea and its surrounding areas, that’s easier planned than done.
To learn more, A-Z Animals contacted Miguel Hernandez, spokesman for the state’s Salton Sea Management Program.
It turns out that the Salton Sea and its adjacent shorelines are owned by a variety of federal, state, and private entities, including the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla tribe. Approximately 60 percent is owned by the Imperial Irrigation District, a self-regulating public agency. The state of California controls less than two percent.
“Everybody owns a piece of it,” Hernandez said, and “it has been that way for quite some time.”
As to how the state intends to coordinate a remediation project with so many different owners, Hernandez said “It’s nearly impossible.
“The fact that the sea has so many owners is a challenge for the state,” he said.
California is the responsible entity for restoring the Salton Sea. That means, Hernandez told us, “Not taking it back to its heyday but addressing the environmental impact and the impacts to wildlife.”
As for any remaining fish, Hernandez said that two species, the desert pupfish (Cyprinodon maculariusa), considered an endangered species, and tilapia, have managed to survive in the ultra-salinity of the Salton Sea.
While the state doesn’t recommend eating fish from the Salton Sea, there is no prohibition on it.
A Dead Sea?
While the Salton Sea won’t be returning to its former glory, there’s a lot at stake in keeping it alive.
Should it continue to dry up, the salt content will become too extreme to support any marine life. It will, in essence, then become a dead sea. That would create several hundred miles of a desert basin, resulting in an air-quality catastrophe. Also at stake are hundreds of species of migrating birds that utilize the Salton Sea as an important stopover on the Pacific flyway.
But the Salton Sea and its surrounding mud pots and volcanoes are at a tipping point.
Will the sea somehow be saved to support marine and avian life? Will its lithium deposits be extensively mined to power electric cars, laptops, and phones?
Or will it simply shrink away and become a dusty, toxic “ghost basin” in the California desert?