What do we mean by rich marine resources?

Marine resources refer to related resources formed and existing in seawater or oceans. Including organisms living in seawater, chemical elements dissolved in seawater, energy and stored heat generated by seawater waves, tides and currents, mineral resources contained in coastal areas, continental shelves and deep seabeds, as well as the pressure difference formed by seawater, Concentration difference, etc. In a broad sense, it also includes all the spaces and facilities provided by the ocean for people's production, life and entertainment.

According to the nature or function of resources, they are divided into marine biological resources and water resources. About 85% of the world's aquatic products are produced in the ocean. Fish is the main body, accounting for more than 80% of the world's total marine aquatic products, and there are also rich algae resources. Seawater is rich in seawater chemical resources, and more than 80 seawater chemical substances have been discovered. Among them, 11 elements (chlorine, sodium, magnesium, potassium, sulfur, calcium, bromine, carbon, strontium, boron and fluorine) account for more than 99.8% of the total dissolved substances in seawater, and more than 50 chemical substances can be extracted. Marine power resources are generated due to the movement of sea water, mainly including tidal energy, wave energy, ocean current energy, and temperature difference energy and salinity difference energy caused by sea water temperature differences and salinity differences. It is estimated that the available power of global seawater temperature difference energy reaches 100×108 kilowatts, and renewable power such as tidal energy, wave energy, river energy and seawater salinity difference energy is around 10×108 kilowatts.

Oil and Gas Resources

With the modernization of human economy and life, the demand for oil is increasing day by day. In modern times, oil plays the first role in energy. However, some large oil fields on land, which are relatively easy to exploit, have been exhausted and some are on the verge of exhaustion. For this reason, in the past 20 to 30 years, many countries in the world are making great efforts to develop the offshore oil industry.

Detection results show that the world’s oil resource reserves are 1 trillion tons, and the recoverable amount is about 300 billion tons, of which seabed reserves are 130 billion tons.

China has a shallow sea continental shelf of nearly 2 million square kilometers. Through geological surveys of submarine oil fields, seven large basins have been discovered, including the Bohai Sea, the South Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, the Pearl River Estuary, the Beibu Gulf, the Yingge Sea and the Taiwan Shoal. Among them, the East China Sea is rich in seabed reserves, comparable to the North Sea oil fields in Europe.

The Pinghu Oil and Gas Field in the East China Sea is the first medium-sized oil and gas field discovered in the East China Sea, located 420 kilometers southeast of Shanghai. It is a medium-sized oil and gas field mainly composed of natural gas, with a depth of 2,000 to 3,000 meters. According to relevant expert estimates, natural gas reserves are 26 billion cubic meters, condensate oil 4.74 million tons, and light crude oil 8.74 million tons.

Mineral Resources

The ocean contains more than 80 chemical elements. Someone has calculated that if all dissolved substances in 1 cubic kilometer of seawater are extracted, in addition to 994 million tons of fresh water, 30.52 million tons of salt, 2.369 million tons of magnesium, 2.442 million tons of gypsum, 825,000 tons of potassium, and 6.7 bromine can be produced. Thousands of tons, as well as iodine, uranium, gold, silver, etc., which shows the value of marine resources.

Food Resources

The annual production of seaweed growing naturally in offshore waters is equivalent to more than 15 times the current total annual wheat production in the world. If these algae are processed into food, they can provide people with sufficient protein, multiple vitamins and minerals needed by the human body. There are also abundant plankton invisible to the naked eye in the ocean, which can be processed into food to meet the needs of 30 billion people. There are also many fish and shrimps in the ocean, which are really the breadbasket of mankind's future.

Fish and shellfish in the ocean can provide humans with delicious and nutritious protein food.

Protein is the most important substance that constitutes living organisms and is the basis of life. Currently, only 5% to 10% of the protein consumed by humans is provided by the ocean. What is worrying is that since the 1970s, marine fisheries have been stagnant, and many species have been depleted. To use a folk saying, now humans have eaten almost all the grandchildren of the yellow croaker. For the ocean to become a veritable granary, fish production must increase at least 10 times compared to today. Experiments at a marine farm in the United States show that it is entirely possible to significantly increase fish production.

In nature, there are countless food chains. In the ocean, where there are seaweeds there are shellfish, and where there are shellfish there are small fish and even big fish... The total area of ??the ocean is more than twice that of the land, and most of the few fishing grounds in the world are located offshore. This is because algae growth requires sunlight and compounds such as silicon and phosphorus, and these conditions are only available in offshore areas close to land. Marine surveys show that silicon and phosphorus are very abundant in deep seawater below 1,000 meters, but they cannot float to the warm surface layer. Therefore, there are only a few small sea areas, where due to the action of natural forces, deep water automatically rises to the surface layer, causing these sea areas to grow densely with algae and dense fish, making them rare fishing grounds.

Oceanographers were inspired by these sea areas. They used the principle of upwelling currents to artificially pump deep seawater to the surface layer in those sea areas with strong sunlight, and then cultivated seaweed there. Seaweed is used to raise shellfish, and the processed shellfish is used to raise lobsters. Surprisingly, this series of experiments was successful.

Relevant experts optimistically pointed out that the potential of ocean granaries is great. Currently, the annual yield per hectare of land crops with the highest yield is only 0.71 tons when converted into protein.

In scientific experiments, the production of seawater breeding in the same area can reach up to 27.8 tons, and the production with commercial competitiveness is also 16.7 tons.

Of course, there will be many difficulties in moving from scientific experiments to actual production. Chief among them is the considerable amount of electricity required to pump water from depths below 1,000 meters. Where does such a huge amount of electricity come from? Obviously, under today's conditions, these energy requirements cannot be met.

However, scientists have found a trick: they are preparing to use the temperature difference between the surface layer and the deep sea in tropical and subtropical seas to generate electricity. This is the so-called seawater temperature difference power generation. That is to say, the designed marine breeding farm will be combined with the seawater temperature difference power station.

According to calculations by relevant scientists, due to the strong sunlight in tropical and subtropical sea areas, there are as many as 6,250 trillion cubic meters of warm water available for power generation in this sea area. If people use 1% of warm water to generate electricity each time, pump the same amount of deep sea water for cooling, and use this electricity for breeding, 750 million tons of various types of seafood can be obtained every year. It is equivalent to four times the total amount of fish and meat consumed by humans in the mid-1970s.

Through these simple calculations, it is not difficult to see that it is completely feasible for the ocean to become the future breadbasket of mankind.

Seawater Energy

The vast sea not only contains rich mineral resources, but also has truly inexhaustible marine energy. It is different from seabed energy resources such as coal, oil, and natural gas stored on the seabed, and it is also different from chemical energy resources such as uranium, magnesium, lithium, and heavy water dissolved in water. It has its own unique way and form, which is energy such as kinetic energy, potential energy, thermal energy, physical and chemical energy expressed in tides, waves, currents, temperature differences, salinity differences, etc. Directly speaking, it is tidal energy, wave energy, seawater temperature difference energy, ocean current energy and salinity difference energy, etc. This is a "renewable energy source" that will never be exhausted and will not cause any pollution.

Tidal energy is the energy generated when tides move. It is the earliest marine power resource utilized by humans. In China, small workshops that used tides to grind mills appeared in the coastal areas of the Tang Dynasty. Later, in the 11th and 12th centuries, tidal mills also appeared in France, England and other countries. In the 20th century, the charm of tidal energy reached its peak, and people began to know how to use the tidal difference between the rise and fall of sea water to generate electricity. It is estimated that the world's ocean tidal energy has more than 2 billion kilowatts and can generate 12,400 trillion degrees of electricity every year.

Currently, the world's first and largest tidal power plant is located at the mouth of the Langs River in the English Channel in France, with an annual power supply of 544 million kWh. Some experts assert that the future of pollution-free, cheap energy is an eternal tide. Others focus on pervasive waves that ride on global tides. Wave energy is mainly the energy generated by the periodic movement of sea water in the horizontal direction caused by the action of wind.

Wave energy is huge. A huge wave can throw a 13-ton rock 20 meters high. A wave with a wave height of 5 meters and a wavelength of 100 meters has a wave crest of 1 meter long. With an energy of 3120 kilowatts, you can imagine how amazing the energy of the waves in the entire ocean must be. According to calculations, the wave energy of the global ocean reaches 70 billion kilowatts, and the amount available for development and utilization is 2 billion to 3 billion kilowatts. The annual power generation can reach 9 trillion kilowatt-hours.

In addition to tidal and wave energy, ocean currents can contribute. Since ocean currents are all over the ocean, criss-crossing and flowing continuously, the energy they contain is also considerable. For example, the Mexican Current, the largest warm current in the world, provides heat to a 1 cm long coastline when it flows through Northern Europe, which is approximately equivalent to the heat of burning 600 tons of coal. It is estimated that the available ocean current energy in the world is about 50 million kilowatts. And harnessing ocean currents to generate electricity is not complicated. Therefore, making a contribution to ocean currents is still a profitable enterprise, but it is also a risky enterprise. The idea of ??using temperature differences as an energy source in the ocean is fascinating. This is ocean temperature difference energy, also called ocean thermal energy. Since seawater is a substance with a large heat capacity, and the volume of the ocean is so large, the amount of heat held by seawater is huge. This thermal energy mainly comes from solar radiation, in addition to the heat emitted from the earth's interior to seawater; the heat released by radioactive materials in seawater; the heat generated by the friction of ocean currents, and the radiant energy of other celestial bodies, but 99.99% comes from solar radiation. Therefore, the thermal energy of seawater varies greatly with the location of the sea area. Ocean thermal energy is one of the sources of electrical energy, and 2 billion kilowatts can be converted into electrical energy. However, the idea of ??generating electricity from seawater first boldly proposed by French scientist Delson in 1881 was buried for nearly half a century. It was not until 1926 that his student Claude realized his teacher's long-cherished wish.

In addition, at river estuaries, there is a little-known salinity difference between fresh water and seawater. The available salinity difference energy in the world is about 2.6 billion kilowatts, and its energy is even greater than the temperature difference energy. The principle of salt difference energy generation is actually to use the energy released by the diffusion of concentrated solution into dilute solution. It can be seen that there is huge energy in the ocean. As long as the sea water is not exhausted, its energy will continue to grow. As a new energy source, ocean energy has attracted more and more people's interest.