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Which sea is the saltiest body of water listed here?
Dead Sea
The Dead Sea lies in the deepest continental depression on the planet, part of the rift valley running up from East Africa, and it has no outlet. Water arrives mainly from the Jordan River and leaves only by evaporation in the intense desert heat, so every dissolved mineral that flows in stays behind and concentrates. The result is a brine several times saltier than ordinary seawater, dense enough that a person floats on the surface without effort and painful in the eyes or on broken skin. The chemistry is unusual as well as extreme, unusually rich in magnesium and calcium chlorides rather than being dominated by common table salt, which gives the shoreline its slippery, oily feel and its crusted white formations. Almost nothing survives in it beyond specialised microbes, hence the name, and the shore continues to drop as water is diverted upstream for agriculture and industry.
The Dead Sea shore is the lowest exposed land surface on Earth.
Why the other answers are wrong
- Red Sea. The Red Sea is saltier than the open ocean because of high evaporation and little river inflow, but it connects to the Indian Ocean and is nowhere near as concentrated.
- Baltic Sea. The Baltic is one of the least salty seas anywhere, heavily diluted by rivers and its narrow connection to the North Sea.
- Caspian Sea. The Caspian is the world's largest enclosed body of water but is only mildly saline, roughly a third as salty as the ocean.
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