Brine pool

Okay kiddo, have you ever put salt in water and stirred it until the salt disappears? Well, imagine if you did that with SO MUCH salt that it didn't even dissolve anymore, and it just sank to the bottom of the water. That's basically a brine pool!

A brine pool is a place in the ocean where there is a really high concentration of salt. This happens because there are some places where salt water from the ocean gets trapped in a basin or a depression on the ocean floor. Over time, the water inside the basin evaporates and becomes more and more salty, until the salt crystallizes and forms a thick layer on the bottom of the basin.

Since salt is heavier than water, this layer of salt sinks down to the bottom of the basin, creating a pool of really salty water that's separate from the rest of the ocean. Some brine pools are so salty that they can actually be toxic to most living things.

But even though they're so salty, brine pools are still really interesting places for scientists to study! They can tell us a lot about the chemistry of the ocean, and some brine pools even have unique animals that have adapted to live in these super salty conditions. So even though they might not be the best place for us to swim, brine pools are definitely a cool thing to learn about!