Electrical Properties of Sea Water: Theory and Applications☆

Abstract Seawater is an aqueous multi-component electrolyte with a range of electrical properties. The most important electrical property of seawater for marine scientists is its conductivity, because this can be related to salinity. However, electrical potentials that arise from the interactions of specific ions and electrodes can be used to estimate other properties, for example, pH. These can also lead to corrosion problems. The ionic nature of seawater can also be exploited to estimate the flow because of potentials that arise from ion motion in magnetic fields.