Essays on the Main/Why Are Seas and Oceans Salty?

Why Are Seas and Oceans Salty?

It’s possible to joke like this:

Seas and oceans are salty, because everyone pees into them.

And this is happening since the appearance on the planet of organic (that is, embodied in organic bodies) life forms. They pee — and now. And they will pee.

One can pee directly into sees and oceans. But also — into rivers, flowing into them.

In science, there is the notion of a catchment area. That is, even if we pee not into a river or brook, but “into land” or into a lake, then the urine, after all, falls into the underground waters, which later turn out to be in rivers and, eventually, in seas and oceans. It is also clear that urine from toilets (in cities or village ones) also flows into sees and oceans.

Therefore, it is possible — in jest — to say that the water of seas and oceans is not water at all, from the point of view of chemistry, rather urine — “in homeopathic dilution”.

The chemical water from this liquid gradually evaporates, but the salts remain. Therefore, the concentration of salts in seas and oceans is slowly increasing.

The main salt, which creates for us a salty taste in the sea water, is sodium chloride, which is extracted either from sea salt deposits (including ancient dried up ones, called rock salt), or when the sea water is desalinated. We use salt, obtained in these ways, first of all, — after industrial purification — for preparing food.

But the sea water contains not only salts which exist in urine. The sea water also contains substances that come into it from both soluble natural minerals, and from plants, including algae, and from bacteria, and from decaying dead bodies, and from excrement, as well as from meteorites and other cosmic bodies falling to Earth. This list may be enlarged by herbicides, chemical fertilizers, and other industrial derivatives, including its waste.

Sea water usually contains a full set of chemical elements called trace elements. Their intake into our organisms is important for maintaining bodily health. Therefore, adding in adequate quantities, sea water in food — this would be correct.

But better not to drink raw sea water diluted with fresh water. It contains microorganisms, some of which may be pathogenic.

It should be taken in mind that in the sea water numerous chemical interactions occur between the elements which are in it.

Also, an important role is played by bacteria in the change of chemical composition of the sea water.