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The Earth contains several treasures including gold diamonds and many other precious resources. But have you ever wondered that the ocean has a vast amount of pure gold dissolved in seawater worth billions? Read the detailed story below. Can you imagine that there is a large amount of treasure hidden in the depths of the oceans? This treasure exists as pure gold found dissolved in seawater which is worth billions of dollars. Scientific estimates state that there are millions of tons of gold in the oceans and seas on our planet but it occurs in a dissolved state. What is the astonishing treasure discovered by scientists in the oceans? Researchers have studied whether techniques using either chemical or electrochemical methods would easily extract the gold but its not simple. On average there is one gram of gold found in every 100 million metric tons of seawater. So how will this gold be extracted if ever in the future? Studies published in Nature and the Journal of the American Chemical Society (2018) have suggested methods of gold extraction from seawater but these processes remain very complex at the economic level. Scientists estimate that oceans harbor millions of tons of gold which could be worth an approximate value of $20 billion based on current estimates. It is estimated that there are about 20 million tons of gold dissolved in seawater. Even though the potential of mining the gold has been talked about before no feasible solutions have been uncovered. This gold reaches the oceans through natural processes. One way this happens is with land erosion when gold will slowly leach from rocks and other natural materials into the sea. Rain and rivers will gradually break down rocks resulting in small amounts of gold making it into the water. The other major pathway is through hydrothermal vents. Hydrothermal vents are found in places where tectonic plates meet and the heat causes mineral-filled fluids including dissolved gold to flow into the ocean. Why is extracting gold from the oceans considered so difficult? The process of extracting gold from the ocean is exceedingly complicated. In the ocean gold can be found in incredibly small quantities over an extensive area with less than 1 nanogram per liter of seawater. As a comparison 1 gram equals 1 billion nanograms. A paper in Nature in 1941 proposed an electrochemical extraction method but it was five times more expensive than the value of the recovered gold. A method reported in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 2018 proposed using a sponge-like material to absorb the gold. But again the technical challenge of extracting the gold at a scale and in a manner that is profitable remains very difficult.