The Dead Sea shore is the lowest point on Earth's land surface.

The surface of the Dead Sea, bordered by Jordan, Israel, and the West Bank, sits at roughly 430 meters below sea level, making its shoreline the lowest point on dry land anywhere on Earth. The lake has no outlet, and with an extremely hot, dry climate driving constant evaporation, the water that flows in becomes increasingly concentrated with salt and minerals left behind.

That process has made the Dead Sea roughly ten times saltier than the ocean, dense enough that swimmers float on the surface without effort. The extreme salinity also makes it inhospitable to fish and most aquatic life, which is how the sea earned its name, though it does support certain salt-tolerant microorganisms. Because inflow has declined due to upstream water diversion, the sea’s surface level has been dropping for decades, and its lowest-point elevation keeps getting lower as a result.