Moritz Küstner/Agentur Focus
Tourists shower at a Dead Sea resort to remove salt water from their skin. The Dead Sea, which borders Israel, Jordan and the West Bank, is one of the saltiest bodies of water in the world. People flock to it for its healing properties, but it's shrinking at an alarming rate.
Moritz Küstner/Agentur Focus
The Dead Sea, which is actually a salt lake, is shrinking at about 3.3 feet per year, according to environmentalists.
Moritz Küstner/Agentur Focus
Because the water level has dropped, one lakeside resort, built in the mid-1980s, now has to shuttle guests to the shore.
Moritz Küstner/Agentur Focus
Tourists relax on plastic chairs inside the lake.
Moritz Küstner/Agentur Focus
A boat sits on dry land.
Moritz Küstner/Agentur Focus
The Jordanian coast is seen from the Israeli side of the Dead Sea.
Moritz Küstner/Agentur Focus
A tourist poses for his girlfriend in Dead Sea mud. The lake's minerals have been hailed for their therapeutic properties and can often be found in cosmetics and other consumer products.
Moritz Küstner/Agentur Focus
Ein Bokek is a hotel and resort district on the Israeli side of the lake.
Moritz Küstner/Agentur Focus
Tourists come out of the Jordan River. The Dead Sea needs water from the other natural sources surrounding it, such as the Jordan River basin, but now the river arrives at the Dead Sea only as a small brown trickle, said photographer Moritz Küstner.
Moritz Küstner/Agentur Focus
Overnight, a sinkhole destroyed this camping space in Israel. Thousands of sinkholes have emerged on the Israeli side of the Dead Sea since the 1990s, Küstner said.
Moritz Küstner/Agentur Focus
Mud-covered tourists walk on the Israeli side of the lake.
Moritz Küstner/Agentur Focus
Last year, Israel and Jordan signed a $900 million deal in an effort to stabilize the Dead Sea's water levels.
Moritz Küstner/Agentur Focus
A banana plantation beside the Jordan River.
Moritz Küstner/Agentur Focus
Flowers grow -- with a little man-made help -- at the Ein Bokek resort.
Moritz Küstner/Agentur Focus
Tourists stand in the water near Ein Bokek.

Story highlights

The Dead Sea is shrinking, and humans are largely to blame

Israel and Jordan signed a $900 million deal to stabilize the popular salt lake

CNN  — 

Something’s happening at the lowest point on our planet, some 1,388 feet below sea level.

The Dead Sea, a salt lake nestled by Israel, Jordan and the West Bank, is shrinking at an alarming rate – about 3.3 feet per year, according to the environmentalist group EcoPeace Middle East. And human actions are largely to blame.

“It’s not just like one country is punishing the Dead Sea; it’s more like the whole region,” said photographer Moritz Küstner, who visited the area in February to work on his series “The Dying Dead Sea.”

The Dead Sea needs water from the other natural sources surrounding it, such as the Jordan River basin. But around the 1960s, some of the water sources it relied upon were diverted. Israel, for instance, built a pipeline during that time so it could supply water throughout the country.

Moritz Küstner/Agentur Focus
Photographer Moritz Küstner

Mineral extraction industries are another main reason the water levels are declining, experts say. The Dead Sea’s minerals have been hailed for their therapeutic properties and can often be found in cosmetics and other consumer products.

And then, of course, there’s the Middle East’s hot, dry climate, which makes it difficult for the lake to replenish itself.

Last year, Israel and Jordan signed a $900 million deal in an effort to stabilize the Dead Sea’s water levels. It entails building a canal from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea so that both countries would be able to not only supply water to Israel and Jordan but also to pump much needed water – some 300 million cubic meters annually – into the Dead Sea.

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    • “This is the most important and significant agreement since the peace treaty with Jordan (in 1994),” said Silvan Shalom, Israel’s energy and water resources minister at the time. Whether the canal – estimated to take three years to complete – will work out positively and as planned remains to be seen.

    But for now, Küstner shows us that the Dead Sea remains very much a place of interest, with people from all over the world flocking there to swim in its salty waters.

    The Dead Sea, known as the Salt Sea in Hebrew, is one of the saltiest bodies of water in the world, with around 34% salinity. And because of what has been happening over the years, the salt is only getting saltier.

    01:11 - Source: CNN
    Surviving a 'Dead Sea' swim

    Earlier this month, nearly 30 marathon swimmers from around the world – wanting to bring awareness to the falling water levels – swam the nine-mile Dead Sea stretch from Jordan to Israel. They wore face masks to protect their eyes and mouths, but one swimmer still described the experience as being “like acid burning your eyeballs.”

    “It’s an unfriendly environment for people to live there or to stay there,” Küstner said. “It’s really salty and if you taste the Dead Sea, it’s not tasting like salty water anymore. It’s just tasting toxic.”

    Moritz Küstner is a photographer based in Hanover, Germany. He is represented by Agentur Focus. You can follow him on Facebook and Tumblr.