Phyllis Shay, age 11, of `Dallas, Texas,for  her  question:

Is there really gold in the sea?

There is still ten billion tons of gold waiting in the sea.

Yes, it is true. There is gold in the sea, It doesn1t float around in nuggets. It isn’t the gold in sunken treasure ships. It is dissolved in the seawater along with about 50 other chemicals and minerals.

This gold was not put there by old‑time pirates' but it was put there by robbers, These robbers are millions of little streams and countless big rivers. Their tiny tongues of water lap at rocks and soil. All kinds of things are dissolved and carried away in the flowing streams.

Finally this water empties into the sea. Every hour, tons of river water carry along supplies of dissolved minerals to the sea. And the sea holds on to the loot, The beaming sun dries up water from the face of the sea. But the water goes off in tiny molecules of pure vapor. Most of the heavy plunder is left behind. Day by day the robbery goes on,` Day by day the sea gets saltier as dissolved minerals are added.

The restless sea mixes and tosses the world over. Areas around bi‑ rivers and near melting icebergs are somewhat less full of chemicals. Stagnant seas tend to collect more chemicals in their waters. Put, in the main, seawater is very much alike all over the world,

There is plenty of ordinary salt in the brew,, There is calcium, cobalt and there is magnesium. There is gold and silver. The problem is how is how could you recover this free gold from seawater?

Imagine a square tank with sides a mile high and a mile wide. Let's fill it with seawater. Now let's find a way to evaporate the pure water. Somewhere among what is left you will have about 1,100 tons of gold. It is however, mixed with some 166 million tons of salts plus a few million tons of other stuff. If you know a cheap and easy way to separate the gold, it's all yours.

However, who is to stop your neighbors doing the same thing? Gold is precious because it is scarce. Who is going to pay you for all your trouble when you have stacked up 1,100 tons of pure gold on a beach. Maybe, after all, the sea is a very good place to keep all that shiny, precious metal.