THE LARGEST OCEANS IN THE WORLD
The Pacific. Despite its enormity, the name Pacific means calm! It was Magellan, a Portuguese explorer who named it in the 16th century. It alone represents nearly 46 per cent of the world’s oceans and seas!
Stretching to an area of 63,800,000 sq. miles, at one point, it is 10,905 miles from Bangkok to Guayaquil, Ecuador. The deepest spot in this ocean is at Mariana Trench, from 35,760 to 36, 198 feet, with an average depth of 4200 meters. The depth was discovered in 1951 by a British ship called Challenger.
Later, in March 1959 the Russian research ship, Vityaz found that the depth was 36,198 feet. The following year, the US Navy Bathyscaphe Trieste descended to a depth of 35,820 feet. Pacific Ocean is twice as big as the Atlantic.
The Pacific has the more number of underwater mountains. Some of them are volcanic mountains. There are about 1000 islands, mostly low lying ones, hardly one meter above the sea level. Few among are the peak of the underwater mountains.
It is believed that the ocean floor keeps spreading, especially, along the east side. Petroleum products are abundant at California. The giant size waves in this ocean can be seen rearing up to a height of nearly ten meters that dwarfs the surfers. In 1933, a monstrous wave measuring up to a height of 40 meter had been recorded by the USS ship Ramapo in this ocean. The biggest tsunami wave that ballooned up to a height of 85 meters had devastated Japan on April 24, 1771!
The earth’s surface is made of slabs, one over the other forming the layers, called Tectonic plates. The biggest one is the Pacific plate that runs underneath one third of the earth’s total surface! And the approximate thickness of each of the tectonic plate is 100 km. In some area it varies anything from 8 to 200 km thickness!
Among the many, the East Pacific Rise is the biggest underwater sea mountains, stretching from Mexico to Antarctica.