It also contains high amounts of sodium carbonate decahydrate called natron, hence the name Lake Natron. Since the water flowing into the lake leaches through the surrounding bedrock that is composed of alkaline, the lake’s water is very salty. Most of its water comes from hot springs and the Southern Ewaso Ng’iro River. It’s 35 miles long from north to south, and 14 miles wide. To give these obviously lifeless creatures an air of reanimation, Brandt picked them up off the shoreline and perched them in pre-death poses.In northern Tanzania, just next to Kenya, lies the beautiful, and notorious Lake Natron.

The soda and salt causes the creatures to calcify, perfectly preserved, as they dry,” Brandt writes in his new photo/essay book, Across The Ravaged Land. The water has an extremely high soda and salt content, so high that it would strip the ink off my Kodak film boxes within a few seconds. “I unexpectedly found the creatures - all manner of birds and bats - washed up along the shoreline of Lake Natron in Northern Tanzania.

Photographer Nick Brandt’s eerie black and white photos allow both interpretations.

It may look like this bird was gripped by the icy hand of death, but scientists will explain that it was actually calcified in the caustic waters of Tanzania’s Lake Natron. More info: Nick Brandt (h/t: discovermagazine) The lake is fed by mineral hot springs and a river, but no water flows out except through evaporation. Tanzania’s Lake Natron takes its name from the naturally occurring mix of chemicals it contains: mainly sodium carbonate decahydrate (soda ash) and sodium bicarbonate (baking soda).

Lake natron birds to stone