Environment | Worldly Adventures of Archibold Clutterbuck

The World Ocean covers a staggering 71% of the worlds surface and contains 97% of the world's water.

The World Ocean is divided up and named firstly into Oceans called the Arctic, Atlantic, Indian, Pacific and Southern. These Oceans are then divided up into Seas (e.g. Baltic and Mediterranean). There are no real rules to borders of Oceans and Sea but usually they are based on nearby landmasses. For example the Mediterranean Sea has land borders of both Europe and Africa. Likewise the Southern Ocean stops at the Southern tip of South America.

As the Ocean takes up most of the world it is no surprise that it remains the least explored. Scientists have said that we know more about Space than we do about what happens at the deepest depths of our Oceans. Depths which can be over 10,000ft!

OCEANS OF THE WORLD

The World Ocean is divided up into 5 Oceans, Atlantic, Arctic, Indian, Pacific and Southern. These 5 Oceans are then split into lots of Seas such as the Baltic and Mediterranean.

You can see how the 5 Oceans are divided up below:

ACTIVITY

1. Find where you live on a World Map.

2. Which Ocean do you live near?

3. How many Seas are apart of your Ocean?

DID YOU KNOW

The Blue Whale is the largest animal in the world! Male's can grow up to an incredible 30 metres in length. This is as long as 3 double decker buses

or a standard basketball court!

OCEANS OF THE WORLD

Arctic

Atlantic

Indian

Pacific

Southern

MAJOR SEAS OF THE WORLD

Aegean

Arabian

Baltic

Caspian

Caribbean

Ionian

Java

Mediterranean

North

South China

Tasman

Weddell

HOW DEEP IS THE OCEAN?

The World's Oceans are really deep and can be split into different sections or layers:

Sunlight Zone (Epipelagic Zone)

This is where most life lives including animals, coral and plants. Sunlight shines through at this depth, perfect for things to grow and survive.

Twilight Zone (Mesopelagic Zone)

Light is less at this depth and lots of animals don't venture this far. However there are some weird and wonderful creatures that create their own light like the Angler Fish who uses bioluminescence to light its way.

Midnight Zone (Bathypelagic Zone)

It's pretty much black here with no light and the pressure is very high due to the amount of water pushing down. It's known that Sperm Whales venture this far in search of food.

Abyss (Abyssopelagic Zone)

The water pressure here is immense and it's really cold. The only animals that live here have no bones, invertebrates, which makes sense as the pressure at theses depths would crush bone.

The Trenches (Hadalpelagic Zone)

Right at the bottom of the Ocean there are deep cracks in the surface. The deepest of these cracks is near Japan and is called the Mariana Trench, an incredible 10,910 metres deep! It is not known exactly what animals, if any, live here. Much of these depths are entirely unexplored.

Up to 600m

Up to 1000m

Up to 4000m

Up to 6000m

Over 6000m

WHY ARE THERE 2 PACIFIC OCEANS ON MY WORLD MAP?

You may have noticed that there appears to be two Pacific Oceans on your World Map, one on the right hand side and one on the left hand side?

This isn't a mistake! World maps have laid the World flat as normally it is a sphere. If you were to roll your map up and make the two side of it touch you'd see both Pacific Oceans connect together making one big ocean, much like it does if you were to look at a globe or the World from space!