As the rains fall and water flows over the land, the water dissolves salt out of the rocks, washes the salt into streams, then rivers, and finally carries the salt to the sea. The salt stays in the sea because no water flows out of the sea — just as no water flows out of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. When seawater evaporates to form clouds, almost all of the salt stays behind. The left-behind salt slowly accumulates until, over the eons, the seas became salty-now about three percent. That's the simple picture, which is true but incomplete. Seawater also picks up salt from the oceanic crust. The ocean floor has places, called hydrothermal vents, where seawater seeps into the rocks of the oceanic crust, gets hot, dissolves salts from the crust, flows back into the ocean with its salt load, and increases the ocean's saltiness. Volcanoes erupting under the sea is yet another way the sea gets salty. Seawater, once again, dissolves salts from the molten rock. Will the seas keep on getting salty? No. The oceans have stayed at about three percent for hundreds of million years because they lose salt in several ways. Pick up a clamshell and heft it in your hand: heavy. All creatures need sodium to live and most need calcium to build skeletons and shells. The clam, like all sea creatures, gets its sodium and calcium from seawater salt. When the creatures die, their salt is locked up in sediment. Some of the sediment gets pushed deep within Earth-more about that in a moment. The reactions between seawater and rocks are not one way. Sea salt not only dissolves from rocks, it also reacts with the sea rocks and rocks of the ocean crust and volcanic lava. The reactions remove some of the dissolved salts from the sea. Plate tectonics explains the last mechanism for a balanced state of ocean saltiness. The outer hard crust of Earth consists actually of a dozen or so distinct, hard plates that drift individually on hot, deformable rock like floating islands on a sea. An unequal distribution of heat within Earth moves the plates much as marshmallows move on simmering cocoa. When an ocean plate collides with a continental one, the less dense continental plate floats over the ocean one. The ocean floor gets pushed under, in the process, and at least half its mineral-rich, salty sediments end up lost deep within Earth. So, that's why the seas are salty but don't get any saltier.

As the water runs through and over the land, it dissolves anything soluble it comes into contact with and takes it to the sea. When the sea evaporates to make clouds, the salt gets left behind. Thus the sea is getting saltier over time.

G'day Kuyakev, Thank you for your question. The ocean ranges in salinity from 31 to 38 parts per thousand with an average of 35 parts per thousand. (3.5%) The sea near river mouths is significantly less salty while the Red Sea is considerably saltier. Sir Edmond Halley proposed continental weathering where rivers take water into the sea. This explains why the seas are salty. However, there are opposing forces that stop the ocean from getting too salty. These include evaporite deposits, pore water burial, and reactions with seafloor basalts. For this reason, salinity in the ocean has stayed relatively stable over millions of years. I have attached sources for your reference. Regards References Wikipedia Ocean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean Wikipedia Seawater http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_water Water Encyclopedia http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Mi-Oc/Ocean-Chemical-Processes.html US Geological Service http://www.palomar.edu/oceanography/salty_ocean.htm

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. http://www.palomar.edu/oceanography/salty_ocean.htm

Everyone who has been to the beach knows that seawater is salty. Everyone also knows that fresh water in rain, rivers, and even ice is not salty. Why are some of Earth’s waters salty and others not? There are two clues that give us the answer. First, “fresh” water is not entirely free of dissolved salt. Even rainwater has traces of substances dissolved in it that were picked up during passage through the atmosphere. Much of this material that “washes out” of the atmosphere today is pollution, but there are also natural substances present. As rainwater passes through soil and percolates through rocks, it dissolves some of the minerals, a process called weathering. This is the water we drink, and of course, we cannot taste the salt because its concentration is too low. Eventually, this water with its small load of dissolved minerals or salts reaches a stream and flows into lakes and the ocean. The annual addition of dissolved salts by rivers is only a tiny fraction of the total salt in the ocean. The dissolved salts carried by all the world’s rivers would equal the salt in the ocean in about 200 to 300 million years. A second clue to how the sea became salty is the presence of salt lakes such as the Great Salt Lake and the Dead Sea. Both are about 10 times saltier than seawater. Why are these lakes salty while most of the world’s lakes are not? Lakes are temporary storage areas for water. Rivers and streams bring water to the lakes, and other rivers carry water out of lakes. Thus, lakes are really only wide depressions in a river channel that have filled with water. Water flows in one end and out the other. The Great Salt Lake, Dead Sea, and other salt lakes have no outlets. All the water that flows into these lakes escapes only by evaporation. When water evaporates, the dissolved salts are left behind. So a few lakes are salty because rivers carried salts to the lakes, the water in the lakes evaporated and the salts were left behind. After years and years of river inflow and evaporation, the salt content of the lake water built up to the present levels. The same process made the seas salty. Rivers carry dissolved salts to the ocean. Water evaporates from the oceans to fall again as rain and to feed the rivers, but the salts remain in the ocean. Because of the huge volume of the oceans, hundreds of millions of years of river input were required for the salt content to build to its present level. Rivers are not the only source of dissolved salts. About twenty years ago, features on the crest of oceanic ridges were discovered that modified our view on how the sea became salty. These features, known as hydrothermal vents, represent places on the ocean floor where sea water that has seeped into the rocks of the oceanic crust, has become hotter, and has dissolved some of the minerals from the crust, now flows back into the ocean. With the hot water comes a large complement of dissolved minerals. Estimates of the amount of hydrothermal fluids now flowing from these vents indicate that the entire volume of the oceans could seep through the oceanic crust in about 10 million years. Thus, this process has a very important effect on salinity. The reactions between seawater and oceanic basalt, the rock of ocean crust, are not one-way, however; some of the dissolved salts react with the rock and are removed from the water. A final process that provides salts to the oceans is submarine volcanism, the eruption of volcanoes under water. This is similar to the previous process in that seawater is reacting with hot rock and dissolving some of the mineral constituents. Will the oceans continue to become saltier? Not likely. In fact the sea has had about the same salt content for many hundred of millions if not billions of years. The salt content has reached a steady state. Dissolved salts are being removed from seawater to form new minerals at the bottom of the ocean as fast as rivers and hydrothermal processes are providing new salts. by gayathri!!!

Of course the sea is salty. Everyone knows that. But, I found myself sitting with two clever people recently when the question came up, and none of us really knew. Why is some water really salty? Why are there salt lakes in the middle of an enormous land mass? Why? We formulated a couple of theories involving evaporation or rocks falling into the sea and getting knocked about a bit, eventually to the point where some sodium bicarbonate popped out. Nothing was satisfactorily robust, so, I decided to find out. This is for your benefit as much as mine. For that dinner party. You know

Because all of the sugar is on the plantation.

Please read http://www.answerbag.co.uk/q_view/2437 the EXACT same question, but asked using correct grammar.

because if they are sweet, man wont leave the sea atleast to buy. The sea value also will be increased like land value in present days.

its caused due to erosion of continental rocks

Rainwater dissolves minerals and eventually these reach the sea where the concentration will make the sea taste salty. check out this link: http://www.utdallas.edu/~pujana/oceans/why.html

Read this: http://www.palomar.edu/oceanography/salty_ocean.htm and keep your caps down.

It contains salt.

Fascinated Do not forget the chemical residues of dead animals, including some humans.

I'll type slowly for this one: Because . . it . . has . . SALT . . in . . it.

Eons ago, rains disolved and transported most of the salt in the land masses and washed it back out to the oceans as the rivers made their way back to the oceans. . Does this help?

There is a lot of salt on earth (salt is usually a mixture of metal and acid) it is present just about everywhere. One charateristic of salt is that it disolves easily in water so whenever water passes over land (like a river) it dissolves the salt and carries it away. Rivers inevitably lead to the sea so the sea ends up with all the salt in it. When the sea heats up (like if the sun shines on it) it water evaporates and rises up turning into clouds but the salt in the sea cannot evaporate so it is then trapped in the sea. Hope that helps, if you want more chemisty in the answer let me know.

because of the sperm wale