Most of the students in the college biology class I now teach in Mammoth were not yet born. Though at the same elevation as in 1974, today's rising lake behaves differently than the falling lake did. Right now you can see piles of plants washed up like seaweed on an ocean beach. Yet only microscopic algae grows in Mono Lake. These plants once grew near the shore, were engulfed by the rising lake, killed by the alkaline saltwater and piled by the waves of winter windstorms.
Many more people come to see Mono Lake now then ever did a quarter decade ago.
The Mono Lake Committee's efforts to build awareness, to build a caring constituency for this most unusual lake ecosystem, did not begin until the final years of the '70s. They began a process that continues today. Well over a quarter million visitors came to the lakeshore in 1996. The benefits of diluting the lake's concentrated salt solution back down to healthier, more productive levels for algae, brine shrimp, alkali flies, and birds are just beginning. Come see, again, for yourself.