It’s World Oceans Day! To celebrate, here are 4 fun facts you probably didn’t know about our oceans.
- The World Ocean covers 71% of the Earth’s Surface. This is subdivided into 5 major oceans: Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern (Antarctic), and Arctic Oceans. The world’s oceans contain enough water to fill a cube with edges over 1000 kilometres (621 miles) in length.
- The largest ocean on Earth is the Pacific Ocean which covers around 30% of the Earth’s surface. Its name originally means ‘peaceful sea’. The Pacific Ocean contains around 25000 different islands, and is surrounded by the Pacific Ring of Fire, a large number of active volcanoes.
3. Only 5% of the world’s oceans have been explored. In fact, scientists have developed better maps of Mars than we currently have of the ocean floor. While there are hundreds of thousands of known marine life forms, there are many that are yet to be discovered, some scientists suggest that there could actually be millions of marine life forms out there.
4. The ocean is basically an inverted version of land. Below the ocean surface you can find underwater lakes, waterfalls and even upside-down lakes! (Check out this video to see!)
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