Turquoise Mystery Lake
The mystery behind a uniquely coloured lake in rural Quebec.
EPISODE NOTES
TRANSCRIPT
Last weekend I was at this weird and beautiful lake in rural Quebec. Weird because its water colour seems to shift with the weather. When it’s overcast it doesn’t look too out of the ordinary but in direct sunlight it’s this vivid mediterranean turquoise.
That colour might be familiar from some famous Canadian landmarks like Morraine Lake and Lake Louise in Alberta. But those are glacial lakes and this one… isn’t.
Even weirder, there’s a second lake right beside it, separated by just about twenty feet of land that doesn’t have that same colour. You can clearly see the difference between the two in satellite photos.
It’s so clear, apparently pilots flying to Winnipeg used to use these two lakes as a landmark for navigation.
So that all took me down this rabbit hole so I’m working on an episode about these weird, non-glacial turquoise lakes and the life they support, but in short it has to do with the amount of calcium carbonate in the water.
That also makes them quite alkaline, and that is a pretty extreme environment and might sound inhospitable. But these lakes can still be pretty lively. Just to name a few, this one has a good population of freshwater clams, northern clearwater crayfish, unfortunately medicine leeches, but fortunately hungry fish.
Just, maybe, stay out if you’re a deer…