A Mix of Elements
The sea is a chemistry, too. Over 60 elements have been discovered in measurable amounts in solution or in suspension in the ocean. Many of these are in the form of salts, making seawater a highly efficient electrolyte, and a most corrosive fluid. The study of corrosion and techniques for combatting it is a continuous one in which nuclear energy already has a principal role.
Because the sea is so much a chemistry, it is a potential source of minerals for the world’s growing industrial appetite. All of our magnesium and most of our bromine already are extracted directly from seawater. Oil and sulfur are mined from the sea floor or beneath it, as are coal (United Kingdom and Japan), iron ore (Japan), tin (Thailand and United Kingdom), diamonds (Southwest Africa), and gold (Alaska). In the layered sediments that cover the ocean-basin floors to depths of thousands of feet, geologists believe there also may be found some missing chapters of earth history.
Nodules such as these containing manganese cover millions of undersea acres on the ocean floor. Many nodules are rich in nickel, cobalt, zirconium, and copper. Metallurgists are seeking ways to recover the metals from these deposits.
The ocean, by and large, is an opaque fluid through which light travels only a few hundred feet and most other radiant energy not much more than a few yards; yet through this same fluid, sound waves, by contrast, have been transmitted and received over distances of many thousand miles.