28 Ocean Facts : That Will Leave You In Awe

In a departure from our usual writing style, this piece is merely a collection of some of our favorite facts about our oceans and marine life. It is not a definitive list or listed in any specific order; it is simply a selection of our favorites. Enjoy!

The Oceans Are Massive.

Oceans Are Massive.

Our oceans encompass around 71% of the Earth’s surface, but due to their depth, they hold 99.9% of the habitable space for life on Earth. In addition, they hold 1.35 billion cubic kilometers of water! The oceans cover more than two-thirds of our planet’s surface.

They Are Profound

The ocean’s average depth is 3,688 meters (12,100ft). The Marianna Trench’s deepest point is 10,994 meters down at Challenger Deep, where the pressure reaches a crushing eight tonnes per square inch! Mt. Everest could fit at this depth, yet the summit would still be nearly a mile below the surface.

We Haven’t Looked Into the Majority of These

Fish

Scientists have precisely mapped only 5% of the seafloor. In fact, we know more about the moon and Mars’ surfaces than we do about our own ocean floor. However, new technology advancements may be able to modify this in the next decades.

They Do Move… Very Slowly.

The worldwide ocean conveyor belt, which is responsible for the continual transportation of water around our seas, moves at a far slower rate than wind or tidal currents. A parcel of water may take up to 1000 years to complete a full cycle around it! It also moves almost 100 times more water than the Amazon River.

The Pacific Is the World’s Largest Ocean.

World’s Largest Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is wider than the moon’s widest point (between Indonesia and Columbia). In fact, at 12,300 miles across, it is five times the size of the moon! It also has more than 25,000 islands.

‘Point Nemo’ in the Pacific is the furthest point in the ocean from land, located over 1,000 miles from any landmass. The astronauts aboard the International Space Station are frequently the closest humans to this point when they pass overhead.

Even On The Surface, They Store A Lot of Stuff.

The top 10 meters of our seas contain the same mass as our entire atmosphere, the top 2.5 meters contain the same amount of heat, and the top 2.5 centimeters contain the same quantity of water.

The oceans also store 38,000 gigatonnes of carbon (1 gigatonne = 1 billion tons), 16 times the amount the terrestrial biosphere stores.

The Longest Mountain Range On The Planet Is Really In The Waters

Longest Mountain Range

The Mid-Ocean Ridge, which runs over 65,000 kilometers over the seafloor of all major seas, is four times the length of the Andes, Rockies, and Himalayas combined!

The ocean also contains the world’s largest waterfall. The Denmark Straight Cataract, located in the Atlantic between Iceland and Greenland, is a subsurface waterfall consisting of 5 million cubic meters of water falling 3,505 meters constantly (3x taller than Angel Falls). A temperature difference on either side of a huge undersea ridge creates it.

The Oceans Are Teeming With Wealth.

According to experts, the seafloor contains more historical artifacts than all of the world’s museums combined!

According to UNESCO, there are up to 3 million shipwrecks in our oceans, each containing various historical treasures. In addition, the oceans contain 20 million tonnes of gold, most of which is dissolved in seawater at a concentration of a few parts per trillion.

Scuba Dive With A World Record

Scuba Dive

Ahmed Gabr achieved the current world record for the deepest scuba dive in the Red Sea in 2014. It only took 12 minutes to reach that depth, yet it took him nearly 15 hours to safely ascend to the surface!

Half of America Is Submerged.

Over half of the United States is actually in the ocean, thanks to its 200-mile-long Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) around its lengthy continental coastlines, Alaskan peninsula, and various island possessions.

Coral Reefs Are Extremely Precious (and Valuable)

Ocean Facts

Coral reefs span less than 1% of the seafloor yet are home to up to a quarter of all known marine species.

As a result, they supply food and money to hundreds of millions of people, as well as storm protection and medicines. As a result, NOAA presently values them at roughly $30 billion yearly (which many experts believe is an underestimate).

Plankton Accounts 3Half 3 The Air We Breathe

Trillions of photosynthetic bacteria, known as phytoplankton, in the water create as much oxygen as all the plants on land combined (some scientists argue even more).

This means that every other breath you breathe has come from the oceans on average, including oxygen created by seagrass meadows and kelp forests.

The World’s Largest Migration Occurs In The Oceans… Every Day

World’s Largest Migration

Every day, the world’s largest animal migration by mass occurs in the ocean, and it is not geographical but vertical.

Every night, millions of deep-sea organisms migrate thousands of meters up to feast on plankton that has risen to the surface before returning to the depths before dawn. It is referred to as the Diel Vertical Migration.

The Sahara Desert Is Composed Of Decomposing Plankton

The skeletons of diatoms, a form of phytoplankton that lived inside silica housing and used to reside in an ocean above Northern Africa millions of years ago, make up most of the sand in the Sahara Desert.

Greenland Sharks Have Been Known To Survive For Almost 400 Years!

Greenland Sharks

This indicates that Greenland sharks born in the 1600s still swim throughout the Arctic. Researchers discovered this by examining the radiation levels in their eye lens growth rings induced by cold war nuclear weapon explosions.

Dolphins Possess ‘x-Ray Eyesight.’

Dolphins have the ability to see through other species! The high-pitched sound they make for echolocation bounces off hard surfaces like bone and cartilage, but it also travels through soft tissue. This enables them to see (or, more properly, hear) through the eyes of other creatures.

Sperm Whales Have the Largest Noses of Any Animal.

Sperm Whales Have The Largest Noses Of Any Animal.

Sperm whales produce huge booming noises in the deep ocean by rebounding sound waves in a big ‘drum’ in their noses. This is most likely employed for communication in the pitch-black waters where they prey.

Square Starfish Can Be Born

Some starfish have an exceedingly rare birth abnormality that causes them to be square in shape! It can only happen to five-pointed sea stars, and the specific nature of the mutation is unknown.

Sharks Have The World’s Longest Pregnancy

Sharks

Frilled sharks have the longest gestation duration of any vertebrate, with pregnancies lasting up to three and a half years (42 months!) and litter sizes as large as 15 children.

The Size of Rainbow Octopuses Is Important

The blanket octopus (also known as the rainbow octopus) has one of the most dramatic occurrences of sexual dimorphism (differences in size or shape between sexes) in the animal kingdom. Males are barely one inch long; however, females can grow to reach six feet long!

Harlequin Shrimps Don’t Care About Their Size

Harlequin Shrimps

Harlequin shrimps prey on starfish up to ten times their size by flipping them over, preventing them from escaping. They will then eat on them for several days while they are still alive!

Salt Is ‘cried’ By Sea Turtles.

In their kidneys, sea turtles cannot digest all of the salt from the seawater they drink. As a result, they exude surplus salt from a gland beneath their eyes, giving the appearance of sobbing when on land.

Anglerfish Have A Sexy Side

Anglerfish

Some deep-sea anglerfish species engage in sexual parasitism, a distressing and unusual behavior in which dwarf males bite into and fuse bodies with larger females before spending the rest of their lives stuck together.

Beaches Are Littered With Parrotfish Feces

Most of the beautiful white sand on tropical beaches is parrotfish feces. These vibrant reef fish scrape algae off corals, frequently eating as much coral as algae, which they break down and excrete as sand. The average parrotfish excretes more than 100kg of sand every year.

Mantis Shrimp Are Powerful

Mantis Shrimp

The mantis shrimp packs the most potent punch of any animal. Unlike most other animals, octopus neural networks extend into their arms from their centralized brain.

This means that each arm has its own separate’ brain and can operate independently from the rest of the body, which explains why they have such great control over their arms and individual suckers. They have the ability to re-grow brain tissue since they can re-grow detached arms.

The Names of Marine Animal Groups Are the Finest

To round up the list, here are some of the greatest marine animal group names-

• Squid – a crowd 

• Lobsters – a danger 

• Sharks – a shiver 

• Stingrays – a fever 

• Manta rays – a squadron 

• Fish (usually) – a school 

• Barracuda – a battery

Octopuses Have Three Hearts and Blood that Are Blue

Octopuses

Octopuses have three hearts: a systemic heart that circulates blood throughout the body and two branchial hearts that pump blood through their gills. As if that wasn’t strange enough, their blood is also blue because it contains copper rather than iron.

Seaweeds Can Be Really Beneficial

Alginates, which are special substances isolated from the cell walls of brown algae, are widely utilized in common products such as beer, ice cream, adhesives, ceramics, paper, explosives, waterproof fabrics, and antacids and are being tested in bone and brain tissue regeneration trials.

In this article, we have discussed the 28 amazing facts about the ocean. To know more about such facts, please follow this website.

Ocean Facts
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