Occupying about one-third of the surface of the planet, the Pacific Ocean is the largest ocean on earth. It lies between the continents of Asia and Australia on the west and is bordered by North America and South America on the east. It covers an area of 161.76 million square kilometres without counting in the South China Sea. It has double the area and more than double the water volume of the next largest water-body, the Atlantic Ocean. It covers more area than the total land surface of the globe.
The Pacific Ocean meets the Arctic Ocean in the Bering Sea in the Northern Hemisphere and in the Southern Hemisphere, it mixes with the Atlantic Ocean in the Drake Passage between Tierra del Fuego in South America and Graham Land in Antarctica.
One cannot clearly say where the Pacific and Indian oceans become separate, but a line of islands extending eastward from Sumatra, through Java to Timor, extending across the Timor Sea to Cape Londonderry in Australia is usually considered as the points of separation of the two. The deepest point in the Pacific Ocean is in the Mariana Trench. It is located in the western Pacific located around 200 kilometres east of the Mariana Islands to the east of the Philippines.
The Pacific Ocean Basin also contains 75 per cent of the world’s volcanoes and forms the Ring of Fire, which is a ring of Pacific Ocean volcanoes around the ocean basin. There is also an interesting story behind the name of this ocean.
It was Ferdinand Magellan, who gave the name Pacific inspired from the Latin word ‘pacificus’ meaning ‘tranquil.’ It is said that he felt the ocean to be unusually calm as he entered its waters and this led to the name.
Picture Credit : Google
