Minerals From Sea Water
There are a number of marine invertebrates that use minerals that are present in the sea in such minute quantities that they were undetectable until the advent of spectroscopy. Vanadium is concentrated by some tunicates for use in their blood cells to a level ten million times that of the surrounding seawater. Other tunicates similarly concentrate niobium and tantalum. Lobsters use copper in their respiratory pigment hemocyanin, despite the proportion of this metal in seawater being minute. Although these elements are present in vast quantities in the ocean, their extraction by man is not economic.
Read more about this topic: Marine Invertebrates
Famous quotes containing the words sea and/or water:
“...stare into the lake of sunset as it runs
boiling, over the west past all control
rolling and swamps the heartbeat and repeats
sea beyond sea after unbearable suns;
think: poems fixed this landscape: Blake, Donne, Keats.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“Communism, my friend, is more than Marxism, just as Catholicism ... is more than the Roman Curia. There is a mystique as well as a politique.... Catholics and Communists have committed great crimes, but at least they have not stood aside, like an established society, and been indifferent. I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate.”
—Graham Greene (1904–1991)