April 2026. Earth Day. I stand on the northern shores of the Dead Sea, marking a defining decade of deep immersion in a landscape that is retreating from the world at a pace that feels both geological and deeply personal.
What began in April 2016 as a photojournalist’s curiosity has evolved into a global mission: to archive these “Genesis landscapes” before they fade into the white dust of history.
These terminal lakes, shallow, hypersaline, and without an outlet to the sea, act as the world’s most sensitive environmental barometers. Today, they are at a breaking point.
The Dead Sea alone loses the equivalent of 600 Olympic-sized pools every day. Its surface now rests at approximately -439.8 meters, a staggering drop that has scarred the Earth with over 7,000 sinkholes, swallowing buildings and farms alike.
In response, my team and I at the Dead Sea Revival Project developed specialized eco-boat access through our Dead Sea Revival Project, allowing the world to witness this primordial beauty. It is our core belief that experiencing these alien shorelines firsthand is the only way to spark the global commitment required to save them.
The sister lake: A journey of lunar déjà vu
This odyssey reached a defining moment in January 2023 during an expedition to California’s Mono Lake, an exploration encouraged by National Geographic to examine the profound “sister lake” connection through an Israeli lens.
The journey was a grueling test of endurance: a 16-hour flight from Tel Aviv to San Francisco, followed by a six-hour drive eastward through the snowy heights of the Eastern Sierra. Navigating a jeep through heavy snow and ancient pine forests, I finally arrived at the rim of the Mono Basin. Trekking across off-road paths once submerged, I felt an immediate and visceral sense of familiarity: a lunar déjà vu.
The environment was surreal. I stood by the oily, alkaline waters, watching thousands of foam balls created by the high pH levels drift toward the exposed shorelines like tumbleweeds of the sea. I reached out to touch the water, feeling its strange, slick texture, while colonies of alkali flies hovered in the shallows.
In the lake’s southern basin, I found myself wandering through the ghostly limestone tufa “towers.”
I told restoration technician Robert Di Paolo: “When you feel like you’re walking on the moon, you know you’ve arrived at the sister lake of the Dead Sea.”
These formations, shaped by the chemical alchemy of volcanic freshwater springs meeting hypersaline brine, are the literal mirror images of the “salt chimneys” I have documented at the lowest place on Earth.
Extraterrestrial science and the united frontier
This encounter naturally extended beyond Earth through my collaboration with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Its research explores one of humanity’s most enduring questions: Was there ever life on Mars, and could it be held within salt? In this context, the Dead Sea emerges as a rare natural laboratory for Martian analogues.
Simultaneously, my work with the Mono Lake Committee, an NGO active for 45 years, highlighted a parallel frontier: Mono Lake serves as a model for the icy “ocean worlds” of Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s Europa. Across both lakes, we examine how biosignatures endure in hypersaline conditions. To walk these shores is to bridge the gap between our planet’s survival and the final frontier of human exploration.
Regrettably, the beauty of these lakes is matched by a dire decline. At Mono Lake, the receding water has created a perilous land bridge to the islets where California gulls nest, allowing coyotes to threaten a colony that is part of a prehistoric Pacific Flyway stretching from Alaska to Patagonia. To combat this, the committee even planned a portable one-mile electric fence to protect the gulls.
My mission then evolved into an ambitious call for an International Saline Lake Union, a coalition intended to unite activists and representatives from Peru, Iran, Utah, Tibet, and Argentina. By integrating the efforts of the Dead Sea Revival Project and the Mono Lake Committee, we hoped to reinvent environmental advocacy through a shared exchange of action, from physical barriers to high-level regional water policy.
However, the world shifted on its axis on October 7, 2023. The atrocities of that day forced a profound and painful pause, fundamentally altering my priorities and the priorities of the entire world. In the shadow of such darkness, the focus on environmental innovation was momentarily eclipsed by the immediate, raw need for human resilience and regional stability.
Yet, even as the landscape of our mission has been reshaped by conflict, the core truth remains: The survival of our region and its people is inextricably linked to these waters. While the path has become more complex, it is never too late for hope. The vision of a united saline front is not abandoned; it is now part of a larger, even more urgent necessity for healing, proving that even in the wake of tragedy, the drive to preserve our shared planet can be a powerful catalyst for a better “day after.”
The thirsty giants: Tracking the pulse of terminal lakes
The survival of these saline giants depends on a delicate hydrological balance. Both the Dead Sea and Mono Lake are terminal lakes within closed basins, ecosystems where water flows inward without an outlet, leaving behind concentrated minerals and a heightened sensitivity to any environmental disruption.
In California’s Eastern Sierra, Mono Lake draws life from mountain streams long shaped by human diversion. As of April 1, 2026, the lake’s surface elevation stood at 1,945.4 meters. While this reflects a slight recovery following the wet winter of 2023, it remains nearly 3 meters below the state’s ecological target.
The lake remains a vital stop along the Pacific Flyway, supporting millions of migratory birds and demonstrating the “straw-in-the-glass” politics, where the survival of a prehistoric ecosystem is weighed against the urban water needs of a massive metropolis.
The Dead Sea reflects a more accelerated transformation. Its surface rests at approximately -439.8 meters below sea level, receding over a meter every year. The historic veins of the sea, the Jordan River, the Yarmuk River, and the Arnon Stream, have been nearly severed. Stabilizing the sea requires an estimated 700 million cubic meters of freshwater annually. Instead, the ecosystem is currently bled dry by mineral extraction and the presence of over 1,000 unauthorized Jordanian water pumps along its northern tributaries.
These “thirsty giants” represent a shared story of dependence on fragile water sources and the urgent opportunity for renewal through coordinated, international action.
The terminal union: Environmental diplomacy and Abraham Accords 2.0
The restoration of the world’s terminal lakes calls for a global framework: the creation of an International Saline Lake Union. This coalition would connect regions from Utah’s Great Salt Lake to Argentina’s Mar Chiquita, and from California’s Salton Sea to the Dead Sea, enabling a far-reaching exchange of knowledge and technological innovation.
In March 2018, I stood on the ghostly, abandoned shores of the Salton Sea, once a 1950s Hollywood resort destination, now a scene of horrifying devastation. Walking through miles of dried, dead fish and witnessing the toxic dust spewing from the receding lake bed, I was struck by a visceral parallel to the Dead Sea. Both are ancient basins being bled dry by the diversion of their respective natural veins – the Colorado River and the Jordan River. These “salt seas” share a common tragedy: The ecosystem is collapsing because we have prioritized extraction over the primordial pulse of the land.
Water systems transcend borders. They offer a shared language through which nations can collaborate, even when political dialogue has failed.
During my recent travels across the Western United States, I traced the flow of the Colorado River, as it sustains vast ecosystems. The parallels to the Middle East become undeniable.
This vision forms the foundation of “civil water diplomacy,” a next phase of regional cooperation that builds upon the Abraham Accords. It emphasizes environmental stewardship as a central pillar of connection, where shared ecological responsibility fosters trust.
My engagement with this approach began through an invitation from the UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment and has since expanded into leading people-to-people programs with partners in Bahrain. These initiatives reveal how shared landscapes can bring communities together, creating a “strategic ballast” for peace.
We are moving beyond the era of “color-red warning sirens,” a sound I know too well from living on the Gaza border in Sderot, and applying that same urgency to the environmental “red alerts” I felt during the mudslides in Montecito. By treating our rivers as shared treasures rather than disputed boundaries, we cultivate a legacy of collaboration.
The healing path: Wellness, the Iranian ‘day after,’ and the future of peace
Since the outbreak of the war, my professional focus has undergone a profound shift toward the intersection of wellness, self-healing, and nature conservation. In this era of trauma and resilience, travel has become more than an escape; it is a vehicle for a deeper, more rooted connection to the Earth and to our own identities. Wellness, in its truest sense, means “shelling off” the superficial layers of conflict and ego to become more self-aware and connected to our own “backyards.”
By guiding individuals into the raw, primordial environments of the Dead Sea and Mono Lake, we create space for reflection shaped by silence and elemental presence. In the heavy, mineral-rich air of these ancient spaces, the noise of daily life and conflict softens. What remains is clarity. It is only when we are able to listen to ourselves in these silent, powerful voids that we can begin to truly listen to others.
This healing philosophy extends to our vision for the “day after” in the Middle East, specifically regarding the endangered saline treasures of Iran. We look toward a future defined by the hope for Iranian regime change, where we can finally collaborate on saving the vanishing Lake Urmia, the Iranian “Salton Sea.” By building the infrastructure for water diplomacy today, we are preparing for a day when we can work alongside a free Iranian people to restore the salt lakes that define our shared geography, culture, and self-identities.
The crises at the Salton Sea in California and Lake Urmia in Iran are parts of the same global narrative of neglect and potential revival, connected by the same fragile threads of ecological survival. My mission is to ensure that the “Dead Sea solution” becomes a gift we can share with a free Iran, turning our expertise in environmental diplomacy and wellness tourism into a tool for regional healing.
We are not just saving water; we are restoring the cultural soul of a region. In the timeless embrace of these sister lakes, from the Judean Desert to the Sierra Nevada and the mountains of Iran, we find the conviction that the Earth’s most fragile places can become the birthplace of its most lasting peace.
As we stand on the precipice of a new era, we recognize that the path to peace is paved with the salt of these ancient shores, proving that even in the most arid environments, hope can still bloom.
The Environment and Climate Change portal is produced in cooperation with the Goldman Sonnenfeldt School of Sustainability and Climate Change at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. The Jerusalem Post maintains all editorial decisions related to the content.
