This Lake in Australia Is Permanently the Color of Strawberry Lemonade

Lake Hillier on Middle Island in Western Australia has a bold, bubblegum-pink color — and not just briefly, but constantly, all year long.

The color comes from salt-tolerant microorganisms and algae that produce red-pink pigments as a way of coping with the extremely salty water — a similar mechanism turns several other hypersaline lakes around the world pink too.

The water stays pink even after being poured into a bottle or container, which puzzled explorers for a long time — the first European sailors who spotted it in the early 19th century were convinced it must be some kind of natural mineral dye.

Only a narrow strip of sand and forest separates the lake from the ocean, so from the air you get a striking contrast between the intensely pink surface and the blue of the surrounding sea.