Our oceans hold an estimated 20 million tonnes of gold, suspended is seawater, according to the National Ocean Service (Maryland, USA). But this gold is spread throughout the normal mineral content of seawater to the tune of “parts per trillion.” Each litre of seawater contains, on average, about 13 billionths of a gram of gold. There are also gold deposits within the seafloor, but profitably mining them is far beyond our current abilities.
Nonetheless, gold is gold, and it has a way of making people believe all sorts of speculative things. Ever since British chemist Edward Sonstadt discovered that there was gold in seawater in 1872, there have been those who have tried to capitalize on it, honestly or not.
The earliest, and largest, attempt to mine the oceans for gold took place in the 1890s. And it was all a hoax. The scam began when New England pastor Prescott Ford Jernegan claimed to have invented a “Gold Accumulator” that could suck gold from seawater via a process involving specially treated mercury and electricity.
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