This is how Nelson, along with her husband, George Sanders, a fellow scuba instructor and co-owner of the 60-acre property, acquired many of the fish swimming in the depths of White Rock Bay, Habitat Bay, the Trench and the Abyss, the seabase’s diving spots. “People thought they were cute,” she says, “but then they would outgrow their fish tanks, so we rescued them.” Nelson explains that at one time baby nurse sharks were readily available at pet stores, since fishermen would kill the mothers and leave the babies as orphans. “They were 24 years old, which is old for a nurse shark.” “For a while we also had two nurse sharks, but we lost them,” Nelson tells me as we walk over to the point of entry of one of three diving spots spread throughout the property. Owner Linda Nelson isn't aware of any other inland saltwater diving site in the United States. Nelson likens the water's color to "not quite as green as the Caribbean," and visibility can fluctuate from between a few feet to up to 20 feet, depending on a number of factors, such as time of year, whether or not there was a recent storm and algal bloom. The blend of warm freshwater intermingled with the area’s ancient salt beds make Bonneville Seabase habitable for tropical fish like barracuda, angelfish, butterflyfish, mono, snapper, porkfish and black drum.
The geological phenomenon is the result of natural hot springs pushing through the land that was once saturated by Lake Bonneville, a massive prehistoric lake that covered approximately 20,000 square miles of what is now present-day Utah and parts of Wyoming and Nevada. Tiny brine shrimp are about the only aquatic critters that can survive these salty conditions.) (For comparison, the Great Salt Lake's salinity fluctuates between about 5 percent and 27 percent. While most oceans have a salt content of about 3.5 percent-and are located at sea level-Bonneville Seabase sits at 4,293 feet and has a salinity of 3 percent. For the past 30 years she’s been luring scuba divers and snorkelers to Bonneville Seabase, a chain of warm, spring-fed pools located on an expanse of desert about 40 miles west of Salt Lake City.Īlthough there are dozens of bodies of water peppered throughout the region, including the Great Salt Lake to the north, what sets Bonneville Seabase apart is its salinity, which is similar to that of an ocean.
When scuba diving instructor Linda Nelson tells people that there’s an ocean in the middle of landlocked Utah, they look at her in disbelief.
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