legends · 3 min read ·
Brine
A salt works inspector finds one evaporation pan producing more salt than its seawater could carry, and what is in the crust.
**Coastal Standards Board — Annual Inspection of Solar Salt Works**
**Site:** Marlow Flats Salt Works, 12 evaporation pans · **Inspector:** P. Nyland · **Date:** 14 September
- **Pan · Water in (m³) · Expected salt (t) · Salt recorded (t)**
- 1 · 410 · 2.4 · 2.5
- 2 · 405 · 2.4 · 2.4
- 3 · 412 · 2.4 · 2.4
- 4 · 398 · 2.3 · 2.3
- 5 · 420 · 2.5 · 2.5
- 6 · 415 · 2.4 · 2.4
- 7 · 380 · 2.2 · 4.1
- 8 · 402 · 2.4 · 2.4
*Pans 9–12 not yet drained. Pans 1–6 and 8 are within tolerance. Pan 7 is not.*
· · ·
**Inspector's notes**
Pan 7 is at the seaward end, next to the sluice. I walked the bund at nine in the morning with the works manager, a man named Hesketh who had run the site for thirty years and who stopped walking about forty metres short of the pan.
"You'll want to take your own samples," he said. "I'll be at the office."
The crust in Pan 7 was different from the others. In the other pans the salt had formed in the usual flat cubic grains, grey-white, with the faint brown cast of unrefined sea salt. In Pan 7 the crystals were hexagonal plates about two millimetres across, each with a pale opaque core, set into the crust in rows so regular that I took a ruler to them. The rows were 11 mm apart. They ran from the sluice end to the far bund without a single break, as a furrow does in a ploughed field.
The pan should not have produced 4.1 tonnes. The water it was fed could not have carried it. I checked the intake log, the sluice record, and the rainfall gauge. None of them explained the difference.
I took nine samples and walked back along the bund. The wind was onshore. For the last forty metres the air smelled not of brine and weed but of warm hair, the way a hairbrush smells after a long day.
· · ·
**Sample log (P. Nyland)**
- **Sample · Location · Description**
- 1–3 · Pan 7, sluice end · Hexagonal plates, pale core
- 4–6 · Pan 7, centre · As above, cores darker
- 7–8 · Pan 7, far bund · As above, cores brown
- 9 · Pan 7, centre, 20 cm below crust · Compacted layer, not crystalline
*Note: sample 9 was taken from below the crust with a trowel. The layer was warm to the touch. The air temperature that morning was 11°C.*
· · ·
**Laboratory note (Estuary Analytical, 22 September)**
Samples 1–8: sodium chloride, 99.8%. The opaque cores are keratin, human, in every crystal examined (n = 120). The keratin is not degraded. It shows no signs of having been in seawater.
Sample 9: sodium chloride, 96.1%. Balance: hair, human, mixed colours, with intact roots. Estimated mass of hair per kilogram of sample: 38 g. At the volume the pan produced, this represents a number of individuals the laboratory is unable to estimate from a single trowel.
The laboratory recommends that sample 9 not be handled without gloves. It does not say why.
· · ·
**Inspector's recommendation (P. Nyland, 25 September)**
Pan 7 should not be harvested. The pan should be drained to the sluice, closed, and left unharvested pending a full review. I have sent a copy of this report to the works manager.
· · ·
**Works manager's response (Hesketh, 2 October)**
Thank you for your report. The pan was harvested on 28 September, as scheduled. The contract with the buyer could not be broken.
Harvest weight: 4.1 t. Sold.