50 Amazing Facts About Our Oceans

Even though the ocean is so massive and influential, it is still easy to take it for granted. There are roughly three million people in the United States alone that have jobs that depend on the ocean; this doesn’t include peripheral jobs like teachers of marine science, either. Thus, the ocean is responsible for between 2–3% of all American jobs. There are six economic sectors in America that depend on the ocean and they make up what is called the ocean economy. The ocean economy contributes over $350 billion to the United States’ Gross Domestic Product (GDP) each year.

It is also a major influence on the climate and the weather, no matter where you live. Water is a great conductor of heat and the ocean stores a lot of it, slowly releasing it over the colder months. This regulates the temperature all over the planet; this heat storage is also what causes coastal climates to be more temperate all year round. Transportation, recreation, the food we eat, the economy, and so many other things just would not be the same without the ocean. Of course, the majority of the planet is covered by it, so it makes sense. But, it’s hard to picture how greatly we are impacted by it every single day. In fact, 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by the ocean and it contains 97% of all of the water on Earth.

The ocean is often referred to as “the seven seas.” This is because there are seven major oceanic bodies of water which are the Arctic Ocean, the North Atlantic Ocean, the South Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, the North Pacific Ocean, the South Pacific Ocean, and the Antarctic Ocean. Sometimes this is simplified down to just include the Arctic, Atlantic, Indian, Pacific, and Southern Oceans, too. The truth is, there is only one global ocean. There may only be one ocean in the galaxy, too. Scientists believe that Earth is the only planet that has an ocean at all.

The ocean is so vast that it is easier to divide it into regions but, the oceans are just one vast body of water that covers the Earth. The term “seven seas” is even more of a misnomer given the fact that a sea is not the same as an ocean. A sea is an area of an ocean that is smaller and typically has less depth. They are still very large and they fall into the frame of the ocean, which connects them all together, but the two terms are not interchangeable as they are often considered to be.

Thalassophiles and thalassophobes alike fixate on the ocean but, the truth is that there is not a lot that they know about it. It may sound like a catchy fact that people like to parrot just to simplify how little we know, but it is true that we have explored less than 5% of the ocean. Greater than 80% of the ocean is completely unmapped and unobserved.

Ocean exploration first began in 5000 BCE when the first sailing vessels were created and a lot of advancements were made given the lack of technology of the time. Deep diving didn’t become possible until around 1700 AD, though and deep-sea life wasn’t discovered until the next century. Scientists began mapping the floor of the ocean throughout the 1900s, particularly after World War II. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the greatest scientific authority on the ocean, was founded in 1970.

Even though technology has been advancing more rapidly over the past few decades than any other time in human history, exploring the ocean remains very difficult. Satellites are a great tool when it comes to the surface, but they don’t do us any good deeper than that. Going deeper, the challenges mount against researchers and their tools. Beyond the first tenth of a mile, the amount of light begins to steeply decline. Just over half a mile down, the ocean is completely dark. The lack of light, coupled with the extreme pressure and temperature of the water makes ocean exploration extremely difficult for even the most advanced equipment.

Ocean exploration is limited because it’s so dangerous and a truly complex process. Even still, we do know quite a lot about the briny deep. A lot more than most people realize. Of course, that means that there are some truly fascinating things about the ocean that you may have never heard before. In this article, we’re going to look at some of those things. So, here are fifty amazing facts about our oceans!

40% of the worlds’ population reportedly lives within an hour’s drive to the nearest ocean. According to the Census Bureau, about 95 million Americans live close to the coast. What’s amazing is that even though less than half of the United States borders an ocean (just 23 states), there are about 89,000 miles of coastline in the country. The amount of Americans that live near the ocean continues to increase as well, at a rate of over 10% per year. Eight out of the ten most popular states that retirees relocate to border an ocean. Construction booms and the tourism industry also continue to drive people to the coast. These areas are statistically more diverse and have higher wages, despite typically higher costs of living.

In addition to the lack of environmental protections, legal protections are spotty out there as well. They are not completely lawless as many people believe, thanks to the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention. This is basically the “Constitution of the Ocean” and it has been in steady negotiation since the ’90s. Several countries, including the United States, have yet to sign it, though. Most of the time, it is generally accepted that the country of origin for each vessel is responsible for all legal matters pertaining to it; however, not every government is willing to honor the legal authority of another.

The estimate comes from the United Nations but it is generally agreed upon by a number of research bodies and other authorities. This number includes all vessels that have ever wrecked and sunk, dating back as far as 10,000 years. What’s interesting about the estimate is that, on average, we have explored less than one percent of all of those wrecks. Many of them, we have no idea where they’re even located. Most of the shipwrecks that have been located were found on accident by fishing boats, sonar operators looking for other things in the water, and even during the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

Warm water moves in from the Gulf Stream and causes the cold water to sink and begin to flow south, all the way down to Antarctica. Eventually, that water is stirred back up to the surface and heated, traveling north once again. There is a lot of different information from multiple sources but, it is generally believed that it takes about 1,000 years for this cycle to complete. That means that one section of the belt or one parcel of water can take that long to return to where it “started.”

The Pacific Ocean is also changing in size, as well. It is much older than the Atlantic and it is said to be shrinking with its age. In a particular area, the seafloor is folding under itself thanks to something called subduction. The Pacific plate is moving under other tectonic plates, forcing part of the ocean’s floor to sink. The Pacific Ocean has three of these so-called subduction zones, which can be easily mapped out by the “Ring of Fire.” The Ring of Fire is an area in the Pacific where a large number of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur

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