Why Is the Sea So Salty?🧂

Morning Seawater Drinkers!

You know how the ocean covers 70 percent of the Earth’s surface?

Well, of that water, about 3.5% of it is salt.

Meaning, if you were to take all the salt out of our oceans and crystallize it into one MASSIVE salt cube, each side would be roughly 170 miles long.

That's about this big:

So, how come the sea is so salty?

Well, 2 main reasons.

First, as rain forms and falls through the air, it collects little carbon dioxide particles on its way down…

This turns the fresh water a little bit acidic.

Once this acidic water droplet finally falls on land, it very slightly erodes the rocks and soil that it lands on.

Picking up tiny amounts of salt and other minerals…

Which then washes away, flows down into a stream, then into a river, and finally, the big blue.

This is where microorganisms break down some of the other minerals in the water, like calcium and iron.

But the microorganisms leave the salt alone, so it gets left in the ocean.

If this only happened once, it wouldn’t deposit very much salt at all.

But think about this happening every single day for hundreds of millions of years.

So very slowly, the salt content in the ocean builds up as more and more of the land gets eroded by slightly acidic rain.

But the ocean isn't just salty from rain running over stuff.

There's actually one other reason…

Look way down deep below the ocean’s surface, and you’ll see these hydrothermal vents:

They basically spend all day burping out mineral-rich fluids.

How?

Well, these vents are heated by Earth's hot magma below the ocean floor.

This dissolves minerals from the surrounding rocks.

And the hot water carries these dissolved minerals up into the ocean.

And it just so happens that some of those minerals are… salt!

Also, every now and then, underwater ocean volcanoes decide to erupt.

Exploding millions of tons of minerals into the water, some of it being pure, delicious salt.

Stay Cute,
Reece, Henry & Dylan 🌈

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