In a curious case, the Lonar Lake in Maharashtra that came into formation more that 50,000 years ago due to a meteorite strike, the colour of the water has mysteriously turned pink. What’s adding to the suspense is how no one is able to quite put their finger to why that’s happened.
The world’s third largest crater, or how most of us know it as the Lonar Lake, has turned pink. This seemed to have happened overnight and experts say that the likelihood of algae in the water body seems like the most plausible reason for this occurrence. The salinity of the water might have caused for this to have happened.
The lake has been a tourist attraction for many people, located 500 kms from Mumbai and is also popular to attract scientists from across the world. However the water’s colour change has taken many locals and scientists, by surprise.
Experts added that the colour of the lake’s water has changed before as well, but this time round the change in colour is more prominent.
Gajanan Kharat, member of the Lonar lake conservation and development committee, spoke in an interview with PTI about how the lake is a notified national geo-heritage monument. The water body has saline water with a pH of 10.5.
The water body also has high algae presence and no oxygen can be found below one meter of the lake’s water surface. To make things worse the water level of the lake is low in comparison to previous few years and due to the lack of fresh rain there has been no fresh water to have poured into the lake.All of these reasons have changed it’s atmosphere and caused the water to turn pink.
Dr Madan Suryavanshi, head of the geography department of Aurangabad's Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University points out that this is in fact a a natural phenomena and has nothing to do with any human intervention.
The lake was first discovered by JE Alexander in 1823. It was formed more than 50,000 years ago when a two million-tonne crater hit the Earth to create a depression.
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