The Pacific Ocean is the largest ocean in the world, it stretches from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Antarctic Ocean (or Antarctica depending on definition) in the south, surrounded by Asia and Australia in the west. and the Americas to the east.
The Pacific Ocean covers an area of 165.25 million square kilometers, accounting for 46% of the surface area of water bodies, about a third of the total surface of the Earth and larger than the area of all the land on Earth combined. The equator divides the Pacific Ocean into “North Pacific” and “South Pacific”. The ocean’s greatest east-west width is at about 5°N latitude, where it stretches 19,800km from Indonesia to the Colombian coast. The deepest point of the Earth’s crust is located in the Mariana Trench in the Northwest Pacific Ocean with a depth of 10,911m.
Although Asians and Oceanians have traveled the Pacific Ocean since prehistoric times, the Eastern Pacific was first observed by Europeans in the early 16th century when the Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1513 and discovered the great “Southern Sea”, which he named Mar del Sur. The present name derives from the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan with his circumnavigation of the world in 1521. Magellan experienced favorable weather during this time on the ocean, so he called it Mar Pacifico, which means “sea of peace” in both Spanish and Portuguese.
Due to the effects of plate tectonics, the Pacific Ocean is currently shrinking at a rate of about 2.5cm per year on three sides, or about 0.52 square kilometers per year. In contrast, the size of the Atlantic Ocean is gradually increasing.
What is the smallest ocean in the world?
