Dr. Murray began his life long research in sea energy agriculture in 1936. His goal: to get the perfect chemistry (consistency, balance and proportion) of the ocean back into the depleted soils. He felt this was the key to proper nutrition, a stronger immune system and a longer, healthier life. Dr. Murray undertook a variety of experiments to unearth the secrets of the sea, often wondering why land-based animals suffered from so many forms of chronic disease while sea animals generally enjoyed vigorous health.
Over the years, Dr. Murray's research would take him across the United States, from Massachusetts to Florida in search of answers. He pondered over what could impart this apparent immunity to sea animals. Was it a nutritional factor? Was it caused by minerals, or some more complex chemical factor? Simple reasoning reveals that minerals in soil leach out with rain and snow, flowing into oceans via streams and rivers — the land’s mineral fertility winds up washing into the seas. Minerals lost from land accumulated in the sea for millennia. This progression suggests that seawater minerals are key nutrients responsible for the heath of sea life.
“Seawater is Earth’s most ancient natural solution,” Murray said, “and, in my opinion, most ideal, physiologically. In the sea, as liquid crystalloid, all Atomic table elements are in a solution of consistent balance and proportion, available to all sea life.”
Murray noticed the elements in seawater are essentially the same as in blood, and very close to the same quantities. This seemed no coincidence, but a true clue to the role of minerals in health. Might mineral deficiency be a significant cause of degenerative disease? If humans get a full menu of minerals, will our physiologic disorders decline?
But how could humans assimilate these necessary nutrients? Drinking seawater isn’t possible — humans aren’t designed to ingest minerals as salts, or rocks, for that matter. Our guts can’t absorb elements in raw, naked, ionic forms. Rather, human intestines need minerals to be packaged with sugars, amino acids, fats, oils.
“Table salt is the only food we eat that’s inorganic,” Murray noted, “and frankly, it isn’t good for us.” He summed up his thesis: “Ocean waters hold a perfect balance of essential elements required as food for the complex cell groups that make up our bodies.” As a first step to learning how to supply minerals to humans, Murray realized that we get our minerals primarily from food, but that water is the second most important source. He decided to use seawater as a soil amendment, and observe whether this provided any benefit. Perhaps if soil is supplied with all essential minerals, plants will absorb them as nutrients and pass them on to the animals that eat them.
In Murray’s first trials, the U.S. Navy supplied seawater from oceans all over the world. Railroad tank cars delivered seawater to Cincinnati, which was sprayed at various controlled rates onto test plots.
In 1940, four 12-foot peach trees were planted 20 feet apart. Two of them, designated experimental, were treated with 600 cc. of seawater per square foot, before the buds broke; the other two acted as controls, receiving no application.
Murray recalled: “All four trees were sprayed with Curly Leaf virus. The test lasted three years. Virus spraying took place only the first year. Control trees contracted Curly Leaf each year, and finally died. Experimentals retained resistance throughout, and provided normal yields each year.”
Turnips were planted the same year, the experimental half fertilized with 600 cc. of seawater per square foot of soil. Staphylococcus bacteria associated with “center rot” was mixed into the soil of the entire plot. When turnips sprouted and leaves appeared, they were sprayed with the bacteria. All experimentals grew normal, healthy, no evidence of center rot. Controls contracted center rot and died. Similar results occurred with every crop Murray tested.
Sea Energy Agriculture, the science that Dr. Murray uncovered lay largely dormant during the next 20 years until a dedicated effort was initiated to rescue this essential knowledge from oblivion.
Dr. Murray began his trials with sea solids after he had started with coastal waters that had become increasingly toxic and unusable. OceanGrown has shifted from using sea solids (crystals are problematic for several reasons; many elements are lost during evaporation, crystals do not go back into solution easily or reliably, they are difficult to apply, and are a natural desiccant and therefore tend to clump in humid environments), back to an improved OceanSolution extract harvested from the deep clean ocean and suitable for all plants. This has required major investment in the design of machinery that can extract the minerals without damaging the aerobic bacteria that is abundant in seawater and is important for revitalizing damaged soils.