Spanning around 60 million square miles, the Pacific Ocean is the largest ocean in the world. It stretches from the Bering Strait in the north to Antarctica in the south, separates Asia from North America, and contains more than half of Earth’s free water.
It’s so vast that all of Earth’s continents could fit into its basin in one mega-puzzle, with room to spare. The rocks in the Pacific basin have been dated to around 200 million years, making it the oldest of the existing ocean basins.
The Pacific basin is better known as the Ring of Fire, a 25,000-mile chain of volcanoes and intense seismic activity. Here, tectonic plates are constantly colliding, forcing one plate under another, triggering intense earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
One product of this seismic activity is the deepest part of our oceans, the Mariana Trench. The Pacific Plate is slowly being subducted beneath the Mariana Plate, forming a deep, V-shaped trench.
Life on Earth is shaped by the complex current systems found in the Pacific Ocean, such as El Niño and La Niña. El Niño is a phenomenon when sea surface temperatures become warmer than average and is typically concentrated in the central-east equatorial Pacific Ocean.
La Niña occurs when the sea surface temperature becomes cooler than average in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. These temperature fluctuations affect global climate patterns, triggering colder winters or tropical storms, for example.
Point Nemo, the most remote place on Earth, is in the South Pacific. If you were to swim there alone, you’d likely be closer to astronauts aboard the International Space Station as it passes overhead than to anyone at ground level.
Pacific Ocean wildlife
Its vast size and depth mean the Pacific Ocean teems with marine life. Sharks, rays, seals, turtles, whales and dugongs can be found patrolling its open waters, coral reefs and kelp forests, while deep-sea creatures populate the ocean’s trenches and hydrothermal vents.
Giant Pacific octopuses can be found in the ocean’s shallows to around 1,500 metres, from Japan and Korea to Canada, the USA and Mexico. They are the largest of all octopus species, typically growing up to four metres long. Their diet is varied and have even been known to eat small sharks.
- This ocean goliath has 9 brains, hunts sharks at night and can grow as long as a school bus
- Diver films gigantic sea creatures clashing near Korean Demilitarised Zone
Pacific white-sided dolphins are native to the North Pacific and are known for their impressive acrobatics and extreme sociability. They prefer deeper waters around the continental shelf but sometimes move closer to shore, where they have been observed bow-riding waves and approaching boats.
