Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the body of water between Asia and Australia in the west, the Americas in the east, the Southern Ocean to the south, and the Arctic Ocean to the north. It is the largest named ocean and it covers one-third of the surface of the entire world. It joins the Atlantic Ocean at a line drawn south from Cape Horn, Chile/Argentina to Antarctica, and joins the Indian Ocean at a line drawn south from Tasmania, Australia to Antarctica.

Earth's oceans (World Ocean)
Atlantic Ocean Arctic Ocean Indian Ocean Pacific Ocean Southern Ocean

A map of the Pacific Ocean. It is ringed by many volcanoes and oceanic trenches.

As the Atlantic slowly gets wider, the Pacific is slowly shrinking. It does this by folding the sea floor in towards the centre of the Earth - this is called subduction. This bumping and grinding is hard so there are many earthquakes and volcanoes when the pressure builds up and is quickly released as large explosions of hot rocks and dust. When an earthquake happens under the sea, the quick jerk causes a tsunami. This is why tsunamis are more common around the edge of the Pacific than anywhere else. Many of the Earth's volcanoes are either islands in the Pacific, or are on continents within a few hundred kilometers of the ocean's edge. Plate tectonics are another reason which makes Pacific Ocean smaller.

Pacific Ocean Media

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  The Pacific Ocean, photograph taken from space by the Apollo 11 crew in July 1969

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  Model of a Fijian drua, an example of an Austronesian vessel with a double-canoe (catamaran) hull and a crab claw sail

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  Universalis Cosmographia, also known as the Waldseemüller map, dated 1507, was the first map to show the Americas separating two distinct oceans. South America was generally considered the New World and shows the name "America" for the first time, after Amerigo Vespucci

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  The bathyscaphe Trieste before her record dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, 23 January 1960

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  Abel Aubert du Petit-Thouars taking over Tahiti on 9 September 1842

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  Sunset over the Pacific Ocean as seen from the International Space Station. Tops of thunderclouds are also visible.

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  The three major cultural areas of the Pacific Ocean islands: Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia

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  An exclusive economic zone map of the Pacific which excludes non-tropical islands.

Other websites

• EPIC Pacific Ocean Data Collection Viewable on-line collection of observational data
• NOAA In-situ Ocean Data Viewer Archived 2006-02-11 at the Wayback Machine plot and download ocean observations
• NOAA PMEL Argo profiling floats Realtime Pacific Ocean data
• NOAA TAO El Niño data Realtime Pacific Ocean El Niño buoy data
• NOAA Ocean Surface Current Analyses – Realtime (OSCAR) Near-realtime Pacific Ocean Surface Currents derived from satellite altimeter and scatterometer data