Oceans and Seas

Adriatic Sea, an arm of the Mediterranean Sea. The name comes from the city of Adria in northeast Italy. (It was once a port but is now 13 miles [21 km] inland due to silt deposition at the mouths of the Po River.) The Adriatic lies between Italy on the west and north and the Balkan Peninsula on the east. The only entrance to the sea is by the Strait of Otranto, which lies in the south between Italy and Albania and connects the Adriatic with the Ionian Sea.

The Adriatic Sea is about 500 miles (800 km) long, northwest-southeast, and up to 140 miles (225 km) wide. It has an area of approximately 51,000 square miles (132,000 km 2 ), slightly less than that of Lakes Superior and Michigan combined. The Adriatic is one of the shallowest parts of the Mediterranean, with an average depth of about 800 feet (240 m). [read the full story]

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In name only, the Dead Sea may not sound like the most charming place in the world to visit. Despite its gloomy moniker, however, the salty body of water is known for its ability to bolster the mind, body and soul. Only one of the many fascinating aspects of the Dead Sea is the fact that, since its surface is 1,300 feet (396 m) below sea level, its shore is the lowest dry point on Earth [source: Ancient Sandals]. Located in a valley that is surrounded by the West Bank, Jordan and Israel, the Dead Sea covers roughly 250 square miles (402 square km) . [read the full story]

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The Salton Sea is a saline lake, occupying the lowest elevations of the Salton Sink, part of the larger Colorado Desert in Southern California, USA, north of the Imperial Valley. The salinity of the lake is about 44,000 mg/L, greater than ocean water but less than the Great Salt Lake; the salinity is increasing by about 1% annually.[1] The lake covers a surface area of approximately 376 square miles (974 km²), the largest in California. While it varies in dimensions and area with changes in agricultural runoff and rain, it averages 15 by 35 miles (24 by 56 km), with a maximum depth of 51 feet (15.5 m), giving a total volume of about 7.5 million acre-feet (9.3 km³). Sea inflow averages 1.36 million acre-feet per year (53.2 m³/s). [read the full story]

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The Philippine Sea is a marginal sea east and north of the Philippines occupying an estimated surface area of 90, 000 mi² (1, 000, 000 km²) on the western part of the North Pacific Ocean. It is bordered by the Philippine archipelago (Luzon, Samar, Leyte and Mindanao) on the southwest; Palau, Yap, and Ulithi (of the Carolines) on the southeast; the Marianas, including Guam, Saipan, and Tinian, on the east; the Bonin and Iwo Jima on the northeast; the Japanese islands of Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyūshū on the north; the Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa, Miyako, and Yaeyama) on the northwest; and Taiwan in the extreme west. [read the full story]

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Important human migrations occurred in the Pacific in prehistoric times, most notably those of the Polynesians from the Asian edge of the ocean to Tahiti and then to Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island.

The ocean was first sighted by Europeans early in the 16th century, first by the Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa who crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1513, and then by Ferdinand Magellan, who sailed the Pacific during his circumnavigation from 1519 to 1522. In 1564, conquistadors crossed the ocean from Mexico [read the full story]

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The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth’s oceanic divisions. Its name is derived from the Latin name Mare Pacificum, “peaceful sea”, bestowed upon it by the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. It extends from the Arctic in the north to Antarctica in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west and the Americas in the east. At 169.2 million square kilometres (65.3 million square miles) in area, this largest division of the World Ocean – and, in turn, the hydrosphere – covers about 46% of the Earth’s water surface and about 32% of its total surface area, making it larger than all of the Earth’s land area combined. [read the full story]

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For much of European history, the geography of the North Polar regions remained largely unexplored and conjectural. Pytheas of Massalia recorded an account of a journey northward in 325 BCE, to a land he called “Eschate Thule,” where the Sun only set for three hours each day and the water was replaced by a congealed substance “on which one can neither walk nor sail.” He was probably describing loose sea ice known today as “growlers” and “bergy bits.” His “Thule” may have been Iceland, though Norway is more often suggested.

Early cartographers were unsure whether to draw the region around the North Pole as land (as in Johannes Ruysch’s map of 1507, or Gerardus Mercator’s map of 1595) or water (as with Martin Waldseemüller’s world map of 1507). [read the full story]

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The Arctic Ocean, located in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Arctic north polar region, is the smallest and shallowest of the world’s five major oceanic divisions. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, although some oceanographers call it the Arctic Mediterranean Sea or simply the Arctic Sea, classifying it as one of the mediterranean seas of the Atlantic Ocean. Alternatively, the Arctic Ocean can be seen as the northernmost lobe of the all-encompassing World Ocean.

Almost completely surrounded by Eurasia and North America, the Arctic Ocean is largely covered by sea ice throughout the year. [read the full story]

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The world’s earliest civilizations in Mesopotamia (beginning with Sumer), ancient Egypt, and the Indian subcontinent (beginning with the Indus Valley civilization), which began along the valleys of the Tigris-Euphrates, Nile and Indus rivers respectively, had all developed around the Indian Ocean. Civilizations soon arose in Persia (beginning with Elam) and later in Southeast Asia (beginning with Funan). During Egypt’s first dynasty (c. 3000 BC), sailors were sent out onto its waters, journeying to Punt, thought to be part of present-day Somalia. Returning ships brought gold and myrrh. The earliest known maritime trade between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley (c. 2500 BC) was conducted along the Indian Ocean. [read the full story]

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The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world’s oceanic divisions, covering about 20% of the water on the Earth’s surface. It is bounded on the north by Asia (including the Indian subcontinent, after which it is named); on the west by Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and Australia; and on the south by the Southern Ocean (or, traditionally, by Antarctica). One component of the all-encompassing World Ocean, the Indian Ocean is delineated from the Atlantic Ocean by the 20° east meridian running south from Cape Agulhas, and from the Pacific by the 147° east meridian. The northernmost extent of the Indian Ocean is approximately 30° north in the Persian Gulf and, thus, has asymmetric ocean circulation. This ocean is nearly 10,000 kilometres (6,200 mi) wide at the southern tips of Africa and Australia; its area is 73,556,000 square kilometres (28,400,000 mi²), including the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. [read the full story]

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