Why is the ocean salty?
Ocean's Salt Story
Why is the ocean salty?
You've tasted it — that sharp, stinging flavor when a wave smacks you in the face. The ocean is salty. Really salty. If you filled a bathtub with seawater, you'd have enough salt in there to cover your entire kitchen floor ankle-deep in white crystals. But oceans weren't always this way.
Billions of years ago, when Earth was young and rain first began to fall, the oceans were fresh. But rain does something sneaky. It's slightly acidic — not enough to hurt you, but enough to act like a very slow, very patient acid that nibbles away at rocks.
