Why doesn’t the ocean get saltier ?
3 If salt is constantly being added to ocean water, one might wonder why salt level stays the same. Why doesn’t the ocean get saltier as more salt is released in to seawater over the years? Scientists have determined that the level of the ocean’s salinity, or amount of salt in the water , has stayed the same for millions or perhaps even a billion years. They have observed that approximately the same amount of salt that rivers and hydrothermal processes put into the ocean water is constantly being removed from the water . in other words, the salt gets used up. For one thing, some of the salt is used by organisms. Clams, for example, remove salt from the water to make their shells.in addition. If more water is removed from the oceans through evaporation than is replaced by river water flowing in, salt starts to settle on the ocean floor. The level of salt in ocean water remains fairly constant .