# How much would the sea level be lowered if we took out all the life? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 17, 2010, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-the-sea-level-be-lowered-if-we-took-out-all-the-life/550550 "2010-08-17T18:46:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Darth\_Ayebaw](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darth_ayebaw/32/9870_2.png) [@Darth\_Ayebaw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Ayebaw)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-the-sea-level-be-lowered-if-we-took-out-all-the-life/550550/1 "2010-08-17T18:46:21Z")
Every known living thing, from blue whale to plankton, from the surface to the deepest life in trenches. I doubt it would be a foot, if that, but does anyone have the actual numbers? ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-the-sea-level-be-lowered-if-we-took-out-all-the-life/550550/2 "2010-08-17T21:29:44Z")
Wikipedia gives some numbers for [total biomass on the Earth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass_(ecology)). It does not give us a nice, neat number for ocean biomass, but it does say “The total global biomass has been estimated to be 2000 billion tonnes with 1600 billion of those tonnes in forests.” So, if we assign everything non-forest to the ocean we’re looking at 400 billion tons. Assuming that biomass in the ocean has the same density as water, that’s 400 billion cubic meters or or 400 cubic km. (This means I’ve actually made two assumptions that exaggerate the volume of life in the ocean - one to assume that every non-forest thing is an oceans thing and one to assume their density is the same as fresh water). The oceans, though, have about 1.3 billion cubic km of water. So there’s about 3 million units of water for every unit of life. That’s not enough to make a difference in terms of water level. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-the-sea-level-be-lowered-if-we-took-out-all-the-life/550550/3 "2010-08-17T22:19:04Z")
Or, assuming an average ocean depth of about 3 km, it’d be a difference of 1 mm. ---
**Author:** ![firstname](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7ab992/32.png) [@firstname](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/firstname)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 9:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-the-sea-level-be-lowered-if-we-took-out-all-the-life/550550/4 "2010-08-18T09:38:57Z")
Well since this has been answered, If we did remove all the living creatures from the ocean where would we put them? ---
**Author:** ![One\_And\_Only\_Wanderers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/838e76/32.png) [@One\_And\_Only\_Wanderers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/One_And_Only_Wanderers)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-the-sea-level-be-lowered-if-we-took-out-all-the-life/550550/5 "2010-08-18T09:49:42Z")
> [@firstname](#): > > Well since this has been answered, If we did remove all the living creatures from the ocean where would we put them? BirdsEye crispy Ocean Fingers of course. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Presidente](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c2a13f/32.png) [@El\_Presidente](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Presidente)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2010, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-the-sea-level-be-lowered-if-we-took-out-all-the-life/550550/6 "2010-08-19T05:23:38Z")
> [@firstname](#): > > Well since this has been answered, If we did remove all the living creatures from the ocean where would we put them? [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/h02a2HSB58M/hqdefault.jpg "Hello Ground !!") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h02a2HSB58M) ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2010, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-the-sea-level-be-lowered-if-we-took-out-all-the-life/550550/7 "2010-08-19T14:13:08Z")
You guys are overlooking the fact that the ocean would actually be much higher if we took out all the sponges. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2010, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-the-sea-level-be-lowered-if-we-took-out-all-the-life/550550/8 "2010-08-19T14:16:54Z")
Also, the bodies of all the life in the ocean must be composed largely of water. Say 80 or 90%? If you took out all the bodies and put them somewhere on land, they’d die and dry out, so the water would evaporate, enter the water cycle and re-enter the oceans…