Salt trade
Only a narrow system of dunes separates the lake from the sea, which allows seawater to flow in from time to time and the salinity of the lake to reach, in dry seasons, as high as 35 g/l. Salt dug from the lake bed produces up to 38,000 tonnes of salt annually, and is a flourishing part of Senegal's salt trade. The vivid pink for which the lake is named results from algae and bacteria which are attracted to the highly saline water and produce a red pigment. Pink lakes exist, for similar reasons, in Canada, Mexico, Bolivia, Australia, New Zealand, southern Europe, Serbia, eastern Ukraine, south-west Asia and other parts of Africa.
