The Truth About Sea Salt

We all know that the sea collects salt, but that isn't really true. The sea only
collects the ingredients of salt. Here's how it works.

The sea takes in dissolved matter from two sources: rivers that enter it and
volcanic activity on the seafloor. The rivers mainly provide mainly ions from
the weathering of rocks—unpaired atoms with a lack or excess of electrons.
The major ions are various silicates, various carbonates, and the alkali metals
sodium, calcium, and potassium.

Seafloor volcanoes mainly provide hydrogen and chloride ions. All these mix
and match: sea organisms build shells from calcium carbonate and silica, clay
minerals take up potassium, and the hydrogen is snapped up in lots of
different places.

After all the electron swapping is done, sodium ion from rivers and chloride
ion from volcanoes are the two survivors. Water loves these two ions and can
hold large amounts of them in solution. But sodium and chloride form an
association and drop out of the water when they become concentrated enough.
They precipitate as solid salt, sodium chloride, the mineral halite.

When we taste salt, our tongues instantly dissolve it into sodium and chloride
ions again.

Salt Tectonics
Halite is a very delicate mineral. It doesn't last long on the earth's surface
unless water never touches it. Salt is also physically weak. Rock salt—the stone
composed of halite—flows much like ice under quite moderate pressure. The
dry Zagros Mountains in the Iranian desert feature some notable salt glaciers.
So does the continental slope of the Gulf of Mexico where there's so much
buried salt it can emerge faster than the sea dissolves it.

Besides flowing downward as glaciers, salt can rise upward into overlying rock
beds as buoyant, balloon-shaped bodies. These salt domes are widespread in
the south central U.S. They're noteworthy because petroleum often rises along
with them, making them attractive drilling targets. They're also handy for
mining salt.

Salt beds form in playas and larger isolated mountain basins like the Great
Salt Lake of Utah and the Salar de Uyuni of Bolivia. The chloride comes from
land volcanism in these places. But the large underground salt beds that are
mined in many countries formed at sea level in a very different setting from
today's world.
Why Salt Exists Above Sea Level
Most of the land we live on is only temporarily above sea level because the ice
of Antarctica is holding so much water out of the ocean. Over all of geologic
history, the sea sat as much as 200 meters higher than it does today. Subtle
vertical crustal motions can isolate large areas of water in the shallow, flat-
bottomed seas that normally cover much of the continents and dry up and
precipitate their salt. Once formed, these salt beds can be easily covered by
limestone or shale and preserved. In a few million years, maybe less, this
natural salt harvest might start happening again as the ice caps melt and the
sea rises.

The thick salt beds under southern Poland have been mined for many
centuries. The great Wieliczka mine, with its chandeliered salt ballrooms and
carved salt chapels, is a world-class tourist attraction. Other salt mines are
also changing their image from the worst kind of workplaces to magical
subterranean playgrounds.