He's Stephen, and she's Andie, and today we're at Bombay Beach at the Salton Sea!
In the Colorado Desert 227 feet below sea level,
past swanky Palm Springs, massive date farms - which we thought were palm tree nurseries - and in
what feels like the literal middle of nowhere lies a massive body of water and a cautionary tale.
Bombay Beach, once a booming resort town, is located near the southern tip of the Salton Sea.
In the 1950s and 60s the Salton Sea was a popular beach destination, complete with a
yacht club. Celebrities like Frank Sinatra and The Beach Boys came here to enjoy the fishing,
waterskiing, and parties. Now, it's an ecological disaster of a wasteland.
Whoa, this is insane! I did not expect this.
The sea was created in 1905, when the canals diverting the Colorado River to nearby farmlands
flooded and filled the valley, known as the Salton Sink. The water flow continued for 2 years,
resulting in what became the largest lake in California, and one of the largest inland
seas in the world. At first, fish thrived in the sea and birds flocked to the area,
and it was dubbed "the miracle in the desert." Developers saw dollar signs
and quickly established resorts, branding the area the "Salton Riviera."
But with no new water flowing into the lake, no natural drainage, and almost zero annual rainfall,
it started to evaporate, leaving behind high concentrations of salt. In fact,
it is said to be over 30% more saline now than the Pacific Ocean! Unfortunately, around the 1970s it
also started to receive runoff from nearby farms and industrial plants, which contained
toxic chemicals from fertilizers, pesticides and other industrial waste. Oxygen levels in
the water dropped and fish started to die off, their rotting carcasses littering the beach.
The high salt levels also threaten the birds who depend on the water to live,
causing many to die and the more adaptable to change their flight patterns.
You can see the crystallized salt here, kinda mixing in with the sludgy sand.
And of course all the footprints from people walking around. It's pretty disgusting.
In 2002, the government allocated more water to be diverted from the Colorado River to avoid the
lake completely drying up, an event that would threaten communities within a 150 mile radius of
the lake - an area that's home to approximately 10 million people. Unfortunately, that effort
ended in 2017, and in the 3 years since, water levels have dropped at least 20 feet. Plans to
clean the water - to put it in simple terms - and revitalize the area, including repopulating the
fish and wildlife - have been proposed. But for now, we have an apocalyptic landscape to explore.
I think we're on the set of Mad Max. This place is crazy!
You can see the water. It's kind of gross.
Wow, it's hard to believe that this was once a booming resort town.
I'm not sure if a lot of these things were left behind by artists, or locals, or if they're
just from shoots, but uh, either way, it makes for a really wild post-apocalyptic vibe here.
So, once again I've left Stephen in the car with the dogs. I gave him a chance to come out
and explore first. But this place is so eerie! You might recognize it from music videos and a couple
of movies. I think one of them was called Salton Sea? But yeah, we don't want to bring the dogs
out here because it's a salt flat, so there's a lot of salt just dried up and crusted even
on the ground here a little bit. And also, the water is so highly toxic. We just don't want to
expose them to that - they'll get it on their paws and they'll lick it. It's just not a good scene.
It smells like poop out here. Not to be gross, but honest truth. I don't know if that's from
some kind of sewage, or probably the fertilizer from the farmlands running into the water?
But I do remember every time I've been here it smelled really bad.
It's either poop or sulfur, just depends on the day.
A little research revealed that the smell actually comes from hydrogen sulfide.
This stinky compound develops when organic matter decays, such as all the fish that have been
dying off due to the increased salinity and higher concentrations of selenium,
arsenic, phosphorous, and other heavy metals and toxins in the water.
So while we've been out here shooting, I've noticed some things falling from the sky.
Little particles. It kind of felt like, um, ash falling from when we're near a wildfire or
something, and I was kinda of wondering what it was. And then I noticed this on my car.
Can you see these?
All of these little bugs are just falling dead out of the sky, all around us. You
can't really see them falling now, but they keep landing on my car. It's such a strange thing.
This is all just in the few minutes that we've been here.
This place is seriously wild. It's out of this world!
We're on our way now to Salvation Mountain. That's gonna be our next video. So make sure
you subscribe and click the little bell so that you're notified when that one goes up. It's a
really cool place. Totally different from here. And - we'll see you next time! See you next time!
...just all the colors, and it feels kinda like a bit like Wizard of Oz.
Looks like they like to party in the desert, huh?