Don Juan Pond, Antarctica, the most salty lake in the world

Don Juan Pond, also called Lake Don Juan, is a hypersaline lake small and very shallow at the west end of Wright Valley (South Fork), Victoria Land, Antarctica, 9 kilometers (5.6 miles) west of Lake Vanda. It is tucked between Asgard Range to the south and north of the Dais. At the western end there is a small creek and a feature that has been described as rock glaciers. Don Juan Pond salt water body on earth with the highest salinity level more than 40%.
Don Juan Pond was found in 1961. It was named for the two helicopter pilots, Lt. Don Roe and Lt. John Hickey, who drove the helicopter involved in the first field to investigate a pool party. In the initial investigation, the temperature of -30 ° C (-22 ° F) and water remain in the liquid state.
Don Juan Pond, a shallow, flat bottom, hyper-saline ponds. It has a greater salinity than the Dead Sea or even the Lake Assal (Djibouti) (the same goes for Lake Vanda and perhaps other lakes in the McMurdo Dry Valleys). It has been claimed that the salinity in Don Juan Pond is more than 18 times the salinity of the sea, compared with about 8 times the Dead Sea from the sea. The fact that it is the only one of hypersaline Antarctic lake almost never freezes an indication of top rankings in salinity between lakes in the world.
Salinity is high enough so it does not freeze in winter. Therefore, unlike the other lakes and ponds in the dry valleys, it has no ice cover. It has been described as a zone of groundwater discharge. Ions in solution is the dominant calcium and chloride. The area around Don Juan Pond is covered with sodium chloride and calcium chloride salts that have been deposited as the water evaporates. Area and volume of Don Juan Pond varied from time to time. According to the USGS topo map published in 1977, the area is about 0.25 km2 (62 acres), however, in recent years the size of the pool has dwindled away. Maximum depth in 1993-94 is described as a "foot in" (30 cm). In January 1997, was approximately 10 cm (3.9 in) deep, in December 1998 the pool is almost dry everywhere except for the few hundred feet square. Most of the remaining water in the basin around the large boulders in the pond.
The composition calculated for water is 3.72 mol CaCl 2 / kg and NaCl 0.50 mol / kg, at a temperature of -51.8 ° C. [1] That would be equivalent to 413 g of CaCl 2 and 29 g NaCl per kg of water.