The Dead Sea (Arabic: ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿, al-Ba¿r El-Mayyit, "Dead Sea"; Hebrew: ¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿, Yam Ha-Mela¿, "Sea of Salt") is a salt lake in Jordan to the east and in the West Bank and Israel to the west. Its surface and shores are 422 metres (1,385 ft) below sea level,[3] the lowest elevation on the Earth's surface on dry land. The Dead Sea is 378 m (1,240 ft) deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world. It is also one of the world's saltiest bodies of water, with 33.7% salinity. Only Lake Assal (Djibouti), Garabogazköl and some hypersaline lakes of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica (such as Don Juan Pond and perhaps Lake Vanda) have a higher salinity. It is 8.6 times as salty as the ocean.[4] This salinity makes for a harsh environment where animals