Well that’s a very interesting question to ponder. Because ALL of the life on earth will be highly affected and can even become extinct if the ocean water becomes fresh water.
Before diving deep into that, let’s first find out why the water in the sea and ocean are salty?
We all know that ocean water is a collection of water from the rain and water that comes in from the rivers.
Neither the river water, nor the rain water are salty. So how come the water in the ocean end up salty?
The rain that falls down becomes affected by the Carbondioxide in the atmosphere as it passes down. Hence the rain water ends up slightly acidic.
Now this acidic rain water runs through the rocks and erodes them creating ions (charged atomic particles).
These ions end up in the ocean through the rivers. Most of the ions are used up by the organisms in the ocean.
Those that are not used up are accumulated for long periods of time. The two most prevalent ions that are accumulated are chlorine and sodium.
They end up making the ocean salty. The salinity of sea water is 3.5%. That is from 1 litre of sea water, you can get about 35 gms of salt (but not all of that is Sodium Chloride).
Now what if all of the salt is gone? What if sea water becomes fresh water? We can get a wonderful source of fresh water so our water problems will all be gone, right?
Wrong!
There are about 228450 species in the ocean and about 2 million more that we are yet to discover.
If sea water is not salty almost all of lives in ocean cannot survive.
There are some species that can survive in both salt water and fresh water, but still the dramatic change will make their survival pretty challenging.
Underwater algae is also among the species that will perish. And these are responsible for about half of the photosynthesis process that occurs on the earth.
Without those planktons, our planet’s oxygen supply will be majorly hit. We will also be left with more Carbondioxide.
As a result many places in the Earth will become unbearably hot.
Plus all the dead sea masses will produce lots of gases, filth and make the sea water yucky!
Without salt, the conventional water currents will get messed up and this affects the temperature of water bodies and hence the temperature of the earth.
The North pole and South pole regions will freeze, while the regions around the equator will become very hot.
Natural disasters like hurricane and tornado will become more frequent and more arrogant.
And, many of the crops that we directly rely on for food or the other species rely on will perish too. This means the food chain would entirely collapse.
It won’t be long before we, the humans, perish as well because the Earth won’t be a suitable place anymore to survive.
The humans could die soon either because of extreme cold, or extreme heat or by starving or hit by a natural disaster.
So now you know why the sea water is salty and what happens if sea water becomes fresh water!
Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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