ELEVEN THE OPEN OCEAN + planet is covered by water. There is so much of it that ifall the vy were levelled and their debris dumped into the oceans, thes f ‘ he wor guld be entirely submerged beneath water 1 4 6 between the contines ‘The great basins ontinents, mountains the surface of a depth of several thousand in which all this water lies meres more varied, topographically, than the surface of the thems ol the ¢le! are I land. The highest trial mountain, Everest, would fit into the deepest part of the ocean, the Marian terre with its peak a kilometre beneath the surface. On the other hand, the b ‘Trench, in the sea are so huge that they rise above the surface of the Ma ands. Mauna Kea, the highest of the Hawaiian volcanoes, chains eh ocean floor, is more than 10,000 metres hi its base snountain on the planet. hightst Ms first formed when the earth began to cool soon after its birth and hot water The condensed on its surface. They were further fed by water g shing through from the interior of the earth. The water of these young seas was not water, but contained significant quantities of chlorine, bromi rogen as well as traces of many rarer substances. Since iggest waters to form ou! 7 measured from igh and so can claim to be the vyapo! volcanic vents see rn de, iodine, " then, other in- on and ni aoa have been added. As continental rocks weather and erode, they produce salts gredi nich are carried in solution down to the sea by the rivers. So, has teen getting saltier and saltier. Life first appeared in this chemically rich water some 3500 million years ago. We know from fossils that the first organisms were simple single-celled bacteria and algae. Organisms very like them still exist in the sea today. They are the basis of all marine fife. Indeed, were it not for these algae, the seas would still be completely sterile and the land uncolonised. The biggest of them is about a millimetre across, the smallest about one-fiftieth of that. Their tiny bodies are encased in delicate shells, some of calcium carbonate, some of glassy silica. They have a multitude of exquisite shapes constructed from prongs and spears, radiating spines and delicate lattices. Some resemble minuscule sea shells, others look like flasks, pill boxes or baroque helmets. They exist in immense numbers — a cubic metre of sea water may contain 200,000 ~ and since they do not over millennia, the sea