Description
The salts gathered in this serene basin find themselves sprinkled on dishes across Europe, from fish and chips to fine filets. Torrevieja, Spain, exports around 300,000 tons of salt a year, harvested from these saline lagoons set just off the Mediterranean. The salt's rosy tone isn't owed only to the fiery sunset: halobacterium and algae called dunaliella salina , both of which thrive in hypersaline habitats, combine here to create a cloudy, pervading pink. To make matters pinker still, flamingoes are among the many birds that converge on the lagoons to scavenge in the shallow saltwater.