Atlantic Health, Wealth and Sanity : 443 



water. A rough calculation would seem to establish, however, in there 

 being over 8,500,000 tons of gold floating around in the oceans. With 

 gold at $35 per ounce, this would give a value of $9,520,000,000,000. 

 The silver in the ocean is represented by 426,000,000 tons and with 

 silver at $.92 per ounce, this would represent a value of $12,541,440,- 

 000,000. 



This is a sizable value but nobody has made any money out of 

 the gold and the silver in the sea except the confidence men who 

 some years ago were able to interest gullible people in investing in 

 secret methods for getting the gold out of sea water. In the labora- 

 tory gold can be extracted from sea water, but at present its recovery 

 takes more equipment, time and energy than the gold is worth. Meth- 

 ods of recovering gold improve from time to time but long before it 

 becomes profitable to extract precious metals from the ocean we will 

 be taking out of sea water other less spectacular but more useful prod- 

 ucts. 



For hundreds of years, people living along tidal lowlands in warm 

 climates have found it profitable to extract salt from the sea by a 

 process of evaporation. There are some modern industries that utilize 

 sea water and extract products from it that have a commercial value. 

 There is an older way of extracting chemicals from sea water which 

 does not require as much of an initial investment and this is to let 

 the plants and animals of the sea do the work for us. Thus there is a 

 bony, oily, little fish, menhaden, that breeds rapidly and travels in 

 great schools. Profitable enterprises have been established on catch- 

 ing these fish and converting them into fertilizer. There was formerly 

 a profitable business in the extraction of iodine from marine growths. 

 Large fields of kelp were harvested and processed and this was our 

 chief source of iodine. More recently iodine has been discovered in 

 salts and brines in the earth. These are undoubtedly the fossil remains 

 of the seas of former geological ages. 



Bromine is still extracted from the sea because that is where most 

 of it is stored. In the sea it is found dissolved in the sea water and also 

 in the bodies of plants and animals to which it imparts special colors. 

 As found in the body of a shellfish called murex it formed the basis 

 of one of the oldest and most widely used dyes, known to the ancient 

 world as Tyrian Purple. 



An extremely modern and growing industry is that based on the 

 extraction from sea water of the light metal magnesium. Under cer- 

 tain conditions magnesium burns and gives off an intense light. It 

 is, therefore, used in flares, flash powder and for tracer bullets, but it 



