EIN GEDI (Israel) • In the heyday of the Ein Gedi spa in the 1960s, holidaymakers could marinate in heated pools and then slip into the briny Dead Sea. Now, the same beach is punctured by craters.

A spectacular expanse of water in the desert, flanked by cliffs to east and west, the Dead Sea has lost a third of its surface area since 1960.

The blue water recedes about a metre every year, leaving behind a lunar landscape whitened by salt and perforated with gaping holes.

Going forward, "you might be lucky to have a channel of water here that people will be able to put their toes in", laments Ms Alison Ron, a resident of Ein Gedi who once worked at the spa.

"But there will be a lot of sinkholes."

The sinkholes can exceed 10m in depth and are a testament to the shrinking sea.

Receding salt water leaves behind underground salt deposits. Run-off from periodic flash floods then percolates into the ground and dissolves the salt patches. Without support, the land above collapses.

At the Ein Gedi thermal baths, the rocky sand - stretching roughly 3km - now separating the spa from the shore is dotted with holes and crevices.

Further north, a whole tourist complex has turned into a ghost town, disfigured by craters and enclosed in fences. The pavement is gutted, the lamp posts overturned, the date plantation abandoned.

Dr Ittai Gavrieli of the Israel Geological Institute said there are now thousands of sinkholes around the shores of the Dead Sea, in Jordan, Israel and the occupied West Bank.

They reflect human policy that has decimated the flow of water into the Dead Sea.

Both Israel and Jordan have diverted the waters of the River Jordan for agriculture and drinking water. Chemical companies have extracted minerals from the seawater.

Climate change further accelerates evaporation. In Sodom, Israel, south-west of the Dead Sea, the country's highest temperature in more than 70 years was recorded in July 2019 - 49.9 deg C.

Dr Gavrieli said the Israel Geological Institute is monitoring the formation of sinkholes from space but it is not an exact science.

He said they are certainly "dangerous" but also "magnificent".

"It has potential to become a tourist attraction, if you're willing to take the risk... and if insurance issues are clear," he said.

Much too perilous, says Mr Gidon Bromberg, the Israeli director of non-governmental organisation EcoPeace, for whom the sinkholes are "nature's revenge (for) the inappropriate actions of humankind".

"We will not be able to bring back the Dead Sea to its former glory," he said. "But we are demanding that we stabilise it."

His organisation, comprised of Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli environmentalists, advocates increased desalination of seawater from the Mediterranean to relieve pressure on the Sea of Galilee and the River Jordan, which could then flow back to the Dead Sea.

EcoPeace would also like the industry to be held accountable by paying more taxes.

A spokesman for Jordan's Water Ministry offered no detailed fix for the crisis. Instead, he said the donor community should play a "vital role" in sparking interest "to find reasonable solutions to the Dead Sea problem".

In June, Jordan abandoned a long-stalled proposal to build a canal with Israel and the Palestinians to carry water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea.

Instead, it said it would build a desalination plant to supply drinking water.

Even if the canal had been built, it could not have saved the lake on its own, said hydrologist Eran Halfi of the Dead Sea-Arava Science Centre. "The Dead Sea is at a deficit of one billion cubic metres per year and this was supposed to bring 200 million cubic metres. It would slow the drop but not prevent it."

So is the Dead Sea doomed to evaporate?

Scientists say its decline is inevitable for at least the next 100 years. Sinkholes will keep spreading over the century. However, the lake could reach an equilibrium because as its surface decreases, the water becomes saltier and evaporation slows down.

Ms Ron, the Ein Gedi resident, said that forecast gave her little satisfaction. By diverting rivers and building factories, she said, "man has interfered".

"We have to be ashamed of ourselves that we have allowed this to happen," she said.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE