Desk: The world’s oceans hold immense treasures. According to scientists, approximately 20 million tons of gold is dissolved in seawater. One gram of gold is found in every 100 million metric tons of seawater. Because of this, the amount of gold is extremely small, but when viewed globally, its value is estimated in trillions of dollars. Estimates suggest that the gold present in the ocean could be worth approximately $2 trillion billion. But the question is: if there is so much gold, why can’t we extract it?

The presence of gold in the oceans is due to natural causes. Rain and rivers erode rocks, carrying the gold they contain to the sea. Hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor release minerals and hot water, which dissolve gold into the water. Marine volcanic activity also contributes. This process has been ongoing for thousands of years. 

Scientists have experimented with extracting gold from the sea several times. In 1941, an electrochemical method was proposed, but its cost was many times higher than the price of the gold itself. In 2018, a new technique was described in which a special substance absorbs gold, but its large-scale implementation is still not possible. Only less than 1 nanogram of gold is found in a liter of seawater. Separating such a tiny quantity from billions of liters of water is extremely difficult and expensive. This is why this mining is not profitable today.

Despite technological advances, extracting gold from seawater is still economically viable. In the future, if revolutionary advances in nanotechnology and chemical engineering occur, this process may become easier. This mining would then have a profound impact on the global supply and pricing of gold, but for now, this remains only a subject of scientific speculation and research.