Salt is still a very important economic item. The Jordanians have a big project isolating salt and other compounds from the Dead Sea. They get large amounts of potassiumsalts for fertilizer, and magnesium compounds for wallboard. A couple years ago Mitsubishi had plans to put a huge plant on east side of Gulf of California to make salt from seawater. There was overwhelming opposition to it on grounds it could adversely affect whale population there.