Me on an abandoned boat, perched next to the Salton Sea, surrounded by the most pungent, oppressive air I have ever breathed: humid, filled with the stench of countless decaying fish, and so salty that even in the middle of the night it feels like your skin is getting sunburned. Read up on this place: the Salton Sea is an ecological disaster, a man-made mistake that ended up creating the largest lake in California, and the home of the greatest diversity of bird species in the continental US.