WHY ARE THE OCEANS SO SALTY?

It’s not just the oceans that are salty! In fact, 97% of all the water on Earth is salty. According to the experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the world’s oceans get their salt from rocks — which contain small amounts of a compound called sodium chloride (the scientific name for table salt). Every time it rains, water runs onto the rocks. Over the years, the water dissolves bits of the rocks (this process is called erosion) and then carries these dissolved bits down to the oceans, which makes the water salty. This process didn’t happen overnight though! It took billions of years of erosion for the oceans to get their salty taste. The process still happens today, just at a slower rate than when the Earth first formed.