Why is their salt in the ocean water?

Question

Like, where does it come from? Obviously there is salt in the ocean water by California but I am very confused as to why it is there!

Answer 1

Salt in the ocean comes from the land. The elements that make up salts, such as chlorine and sodium, started out in rocks. Water and acids eroded the rocks, and rivers carried the elements into the sea. The oceans usually contain 35 parts of salts for every 1000 parts of sea water. This is lower in some places where there is a lot of fresh water coming into the ocean. It is higher where the Sun is very strong and evaporates more of the water. When all the water is gone, the salts are left behind as solid, white crystals.

Answer 2

The answers about coming from dissolved rocks and minerals is correct.

Years ago scientists had a brainstorm that they could find out the age of the earth by the saltiness of the ocean and by finding out how much salt was delivered by running water each year. They came up with a ridiculous answer (to us, now), and here is the reason: a lot of salt that was once in the ocean is now trapped by salt beds (and salt domes) under the surface of the earth. The scientists didn't know about all that salt, so the age they got for the earth was way too low, as shown by radioactivity studies.

Answer 3

Salt is contained within rocks in the form of minerals such as sodium chloride. Rocks are eroded by various means and eventually end up being transported to the coast by rivers, wind or other methods. Once it arrives in the water salt is soluble and disolves increasing the salt content of the sea water.

The water cycle returns the water in the sea back in land by evaproration eventually creating clouds and rain inland. When evaporation takes place the salt comes out of solution and is left behind in the sea, effectively there is nowhere else for it to go but remain in the seawater or fall to the bottom of the ocean keeping the salt levels in the sea high.

Salt levels do vary and are lower in seas where more freshwater is added and higher where there is less fresh water input and higher evaporation (hot temperatures). For example; The Dead Sea has a very high salt content as it is located in a desert with little fresh water input and high evaporation levels.

Answer 4

That is a very good question?

Sea water has been defined as a weak solution of almost everything. Ocean water is indeed a complex solution of mineral salts and of decayed biologic matter that results from the teeming life in the seas. Most of the ocean's salts were derived from gradual processes such the breaking up of the cooled igneous rocks of the Earth's crust by weathering and erosion, the wearing down of mountains, and the dissolving action of rains and streams which transported their mineral washings to the sea. Some of the ocean's salts have been dissolved from rocks and sediments below its floor. Other sources of salts include the solid and gaseous materials that escaped from the Earth's crust through volcanic vents or that originated in the atmosphere.

Check out this website...it asks your question and then answers it.:
http://www.palomar.edu/oceanography/salty_ocean.htm

Answer 5

I agree with Kelly B, but many geoscientists feel that most of the salt in the oceans comes from black smokers and white smokers. This also has an influence in the chemical sedimentary rocks that will be produced, for if there is a lot of magnesium in (white) smokers, then dolomite forms rather than limestone.

Answer 6

I think the salt comes from the land and so that the sharks can live

Answer 7

It comes from rocks. Years and years of water washing up against rocks.

Answer 8

Good question! I know what religious people will say, but what will the scientific community say. I don't know.