Why the sea is salty
You could be out in the middle of the ocean—surrounded by thousands of
miles (kilometers) of water—and not have a drop of water you could
drink. For seawater is full of salt. If you did drink it, it would
simply make you more thirsty.
The sea is salty because rivers dump salt into it. All the rivers that
flow down mountainsides and over the land tear loose tons and tons of
minerals. Most of these minerals are different kinds of salts. The
rivers carry these salts to the sea.
There’s never enough salt in a river to make the river water taste
salty. But rivers have been dumping salt into the sea for millions of
years. By now, there is enough salt in the sea to cover all the land on
earth with a layer of salt hundreds of feet (meters) deep!
harvesting salt from the sea, Colombia
These cone-shaped mounds are piles of salt. As the seawater evaporates,
the salt that remains is raked into piles and left to dry in the sun.
