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Asked by Louis to Philip, Maxime, Ann, Annette, Amy Heather, Jake on 11 Nov 2019. This question was also asked by made46map, JoeyDman.
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Maxime Savatier answered on 11 Nov 2019: last edited 11 Nov 2019 7:16 pm
The salt comes from the land’s rivers and groundwater. Even if river and groundwater do not seems salty usually, they contain small amount of salt from rock dissolution, that then flow to the ocean. When water evaporate and flow back to the land as rain, the salts accumulate in the sea. The ocean are now believed to have formed 3.8 billions years ago, so it took some time for them to become so salty đŸ™‚
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Amy Heather Fitzpatrick answered on 22 Nov 2019:
So salt in the ocean comes from the rocks on land, but it took the ocean a long time to become salt. When the rain from the atomosphere hits the land, sometimes it has carbon dioxide in it. This makes the rainwater acidic. Depending on where the rain hits the land, it may end up near types of soft rock like limestone that is very easily broken down by carbonic acid or the acid in the rain. The acid breaks down the rock, creating electrically charged atoms and these ions eventually end up in the ocean, because of how the water flows through groundwater, to freshwater sources and the ocean. The ions in the water and sometimes used by shellfish or crustaceans (shrimp or lobsters) or other fish. The ones that are not used are left in the water and have built up over time so now the ocean is about 3.5% salty. The Atlantic ocean is not as salty, but the dead sea for example has lots of salt, because there is not many rivers flowing into it, to dilute the amount of salt.
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