Barbie´s Lake

Is pink your favourite color? Well, you just find a beautiful place where you can travel. It is called Lake Hillier located in Western Australia´s Recherche Archipelago, a beautiful and pink-coloured lake.

This lake is only 600 meters wide but it has stirred a lot of curiosity on tourist and scientists for years, but the fact that this is caused by an algae it is even more surprising.

This argue is called “extremophile” and produces carotenoids, such as Dunaliella Salina, a type ofhalophyte green micro-algae especially found in sea salt fields. Dunaliella salina can obtain a reddish-pink colouring when it absorbs sunlight. However this argue, it is not the only reason why this lake is pink, but also red-coloured microbes, a few species of archaea and a type of bacteria called Salinibacter ruber.

We can find a pink-coloured lake in Senegal too -Lake Retba- which has such a high concentration of salt (40 per cent) so the salt collectors need to protect their skin from the water by rubbing their skin with Shea butter.

Moreover, we can also find this type of lakes in other countries like Spain, Canada and Azerbaijan. They are all protected national parks and the habitat for migratory birds, divers flora and fauna.