[4] The lagoon, a marginal-marine salina or marine lake, is an elongate depression about 70 square kilometres (27 sq mi) in area, with most of it lying a few metres below sea level.

During the winter wet season, the amount of water coming into the salina is substantially increased by the influx of meteoric groundwater.

[5] These factors combine to form a setting within which salt is deposited seasonally and the rates and style of precipitation follow a balance between influx of water and removal by evaporation.

[2] Hutt Lagoon was named by the explorer George Grey, who camped on its eastern edge on 4 April 1839 while on his second disastrous expedition along the Western Australian coast.

[6] After Grey's arrival back in Perth, Governor Hutt dispatched the colonial schooner Champion under Captain Dring to investigate the large estuary and river discovered.

In summer, January 1840, George Fletcher Moore aboard Champion reported the Hutt River at its mouth to be dry, and could not locate the large estuary described by Grey.

The lagoon contains the world's largest microalgae production plant, a 250-hectare (620-acre) series of artificial ponds used to farm Dunaliella salina.

Geochemistry and hydrodynamics in Hutt and Leeman evaporitic Lagoons, Western Australia: a comparative study: Marine Geology, v. 39, p. 1-28.

Genesis of calcrete in Quaternary soil profiles of the Hutt and Leeman Lagoons, Western Australia: Jour.

Vadose diagenesis and multiple calcrete soil profile development in Hutt Lagoon area, Western Australia.