01 Why it is pink
In other words: the pink is not a property of the lake, it is an indicator. It measures how much salt is dissolved. A very pink Lake Retba is a very salty one, which is why the colour and the local economy are joined: the same condition that produces the pigment produces the salt that is harvested.
The lake is also very shallow and separated from the ocean by a dune belt a few hundred metres wide. That combination — little water, high evaporation, filtered marine input — is what historically kept salinity at extreme levels, with figures cited as high as 40 %.
02 What happened in 2022
The water level went from three metres to six. Salinity collapsed and the colour vanished for almost three years.
In August and September 2022, exceptionally torrential rains flooded the region. The lake burst its banks, the level doubled and the water was diluted. With salinity collapsed, the alga stopped producing pigment and the Retba stopped being pink.
The economic blow was immediate: the flood washed away some 7,000 tonnes of already harvested salt, a loss estimated at 420 million CFA francs. And behind the colour went the tourism, which was the site's other leg.
The recovery was not entirely spontaneous: water had to be pumped out to lower the level, at a cost of several million CFA francs. The colour reappeared in March 2025, almost three years later. Even so, analyses cited in 2025 give a mean salinity of around 18 %, well below the historical peaks.
03 The salt
What sustains the lake is not the colour but the salt. Around 60,000 tonnes are extracted a year and some 3,000 people live off it. Harvesting runs from November to June, coinciding with the dry season, which is when the water concentrates.
The method is manual and has not changed. You wade in, break the crust on the bottom with a bar, scoop the sediment into a basket and tip it into a wooden pirogue anchored alongside. When the boat is full it goes to the shore and the salt is piled into white mounds left to drain in the sun before bagging.
04 What to expect today
It pays to adjust expectations to what is there. The water is not postcard pink at all hours: depending on salinity, light and where you stand, it runs from pale pink to reddish brown, and in recent aerial images the second tone dominates over the first.
The practical approach is to go in the dry season, between November and June, and around midday or early afternoon with a high sun: that is when the pigment shows best. And it is worth walking down to the shore where the salt is piled, because the scene of pirogues and white mounds is as characteristic as the colour.
And one last thing that changes how you see the place: what you are looking at is a lake that already lost its defining feature once, in 2022, through a flood tied to extreme rainfall, and that today operates at half its historical salinity. The colour is back, but it is not guaranteed for good.
