Facts About The Pacific Ocean Floor

The ocean floor covers 70 of the earth s surface.

Facts about the pacific ocean floor.

As atolls are only found in warm ocean water the southern most atoll are the coral sea islands to the west of the barrier reef in australia. It extends from the arctic ocean in the north to the southern ocean or depending on definition to antarctica in the south and is bounded by the continents of asia and australia in the west and the americas in the east. The ocean is like an entirely separate world. Historical pacific ocean facts show us that tasman c1603 c1659 was the first man to achieve the feat of entering the south pacific from the west and sailing round australia.

This graphic shows several ocean floor features on a scale from 0 35 000 feet below sea level. The ocean is home to a wide range of animals some of which are found only and only in the pacific ocean. At a time when many european explorers were sailing into the waters and losing their lives he was a rare phenomenon. Three quarters of this planet is covered by water bodies with the biggests ones being the five oceans the atlantic pacific southern indian and arctic oceans.

The following features are shown at example depths to scale though each feature has a considerable range at which it may occur. Atolls are coral islands in the ocean which are surrounded by a lagoon. There are trenches mountains volcanos and lakes and rivers. As seawater makes its way through layers of salt it forms little depressions on the ocean floor.

Continental shelf 300 feet continental slope 300 10 000 feet abyssal plain 10 000 feet abyssal hill 3 000 feet up from the abyssal plain seamount 6 000 feet. Most of the world s atolls are situated in the pacific ocean. Because the water around these depressions contains more salt than normal seawater it s denser and sinks into the depressions creating. Below you can see a lagoon in fiji.

The pacific ocean is the largest and deepest of earth s oceanic divisions. 44 facts about the ocean in no particular order earth is mostly water. The pacific ocean is the biggest body of water on the planet it s home to more species and creatures than anywhere else and yet we still don t know all that much about it. We know very little about the deep ocean floor and the life it holds due to the depth and the difficulties this creates for scientists.

The pacific ocean is 15 times larger than america. The trenches around the edges of the eastern pacific ocean are shallower than are those of the western pacific. The mariana trench the world s deepest submarine de pression is more than 11 000m below sea level in some parts about 7 000m below the mean depth of the ocean floor. To shine a light on the hidden depths of one of nature s great marvels we ve put together 16 interesting facts about the pacific ocean.

Here are 15 crazy facts about the ocean floor. In fact it has been said that we know more about the surface of the moon than about the deeper ocean trenches.