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CrowdScience: Why are the seas salty?

Discussion & Talk

Shiv Salt Works, Bhavnagar, Gujarat in India

14/06/2024 GMT

Why are the seas salty?

BBC World Service - CrowdScience, Why are the seas salty?

How does salt get into the world's oceans, and is melting ice making them any fresher?

How does salt get into the world's oceans, and is melting glacier ice making them any fresher? We travel to India and the USA to answer two of your two salient saline questions.

Listener Julie lives close to the coast in New Zealand and wants to know why the water that washes up on the beach isn't fresh. How exactly does all that salt get into the world's oceans? 

In India, a country where salt became symbolic of much more than well-seasoned food, host Chhavi Sachdev visits coastal salt farms and a research institute dedicated to studying all things saline, to better understand our relationship with salty seas. 

The team also ventures to a very briny lake on the other side of the globe in Salt Lake City, Utah, to learn how salt makes its way into water bodies.  

Speaking to an expert in deep sea exploration, we learn how hydrothermal vents may play a role in regulating ocean saltiness, and how much the field still has to explore. 

Meanwhile, listener Will wants to know how much melting ice sheets are affecting ocean salinity. But ice melt isn’t the only thing affecting salt levels when it comes to the impacts of climate change. 

And... how many teaspoons of salt are in a kilogram of sea water anyway? We do the rigorous science to answer all these salient saline questions. 

Featuring: 
Deepika - small scale salt farmer 
Mark Radwin - PhD candidate in geology and geophysics at the University of Utah 
Brenda Bowen - Geology & Geophysics, Atmospheric Sciences, University of Utah 
Chris German - Geology & Geophysics, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution  
Prasan Khemka - Chandan Salt Works 
Paul Durack - Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 
Bhoomi Andharia - Central Salt & Marine Chemicals Research Institute 

Presenter: Chhavi Sachdev 
Producer: Sam Baker 
Editor: Cathy Edwards 
Production Coordinator: Liz Tuohy 
Studio Manager: Sarah Hockley 

(Photo: Shiv Salt Works, Bhavnagar, Gujarat in India. Credit: Chhavi Sachdev, BBC)

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