How do underwater lakes form?
Underwater lakes are brine pools. And believe it or not, even though people often refer to the ocean as the briny blue, while it’s constituted of salt water it is not brine… Brine refers to water with an extremely high concentration of salt, higher than that of normal sea water. It is produced through salt tectonics, or the movement of large salt deposits.
The lake featured was discovered in the Mexican Gulf. During the Jurassic period the waters here were shallow and became cut off from the ocean. The area soon dried out, leaving a thick layer of salt and other minerals up to 8km thick. When ocean water returned after the region rifted apart, the super-saline layer at the bottom of the Gulf became an underwater lake. Now brine, which is continually released from a rift in the ocean floor, feeds the lake.