Revealed: What’s in Our Oceans?

by Natasha Christou Digital Marketing Consultant

71 per cent of our beautiful planet’s surface is covered by ocean — according to NOAA’s NOAA’s National Geophysical Data Centre, that translates to 321,003,271 cubic miles of water.

With so much water, just what can be found in our oceans? Tracerco finds out…

Diverse life

We know that there are hundreds of thousands of sea life in our oceans, though many are still to be discovered and some scientists have suggested that the actual number could go into the millions.

4,000 different species of coral reef fish are wandering our seas — that’s close to a quarter of all of the world’s marine fish species—though be aware that a millilitre of ocean water contains close to 1 million bacteria and 10 million viruses.

Heights and depths

The Mariana Trench is the deepest part of our oceans. Located in the western Pacific Ocean and to the east of the Mariana Islands, the deepest point found here measures in at an estimated 11,000 metres — or 36,000 feet. The average depth of the Earth’s oceans is also 3,720 metres — or 12,200 feet.

Surprisingly, earth’s longest mountain range is under water. Named the Mid-Oceanic Ridge, this mountain chain stretches for more than 56,000km across and covers parts of the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. Meanwhile, Earth’s highest mountain in the ocean is the Mauna Kea. Found off the coast of Hawaii, the mountain rises for 10,203 metres (33,474 feet) from the ocean floor, with 4,170 metres (13,680 feet) viewable above sea level.

The largest living structure on earth lives in our seas. This is the Great Barrier Reef — it measures around 2,600km and is so huge that it can be spotted from the Moon.

Off the Gulf of Mexico, brine pools can be found as can underwater volcanoes where mud and methane explode from them as opposed to lava. There’s also underwater hot springs found across the Earth’s oceans, where water with temperatures of 650°F shoot out — that’s hot enough to melt lead.

National Geographic states that we have so far only explored around five per cent of the Earth’s oceans to date — that means that we have more detailed maps of Mars than we do of our planet’s ocean floor.

History

One of the most interesting facts is that the ocean contains more artefacts and remnants of history than all of the world’s museums combined. There is almost 20 million tons of gold within the Earth’s oceans too — if all which was suspended was mined, there would be enough to give each person on the planet around 9 pounds of gold. Up to $60 billion in sunken treasure is housed on the floors of Earth’s oceans as well.

Around 50 quadrillion tonnes of dissolved solids exist in our oceans — calcium salts, magnesium salts, potassium salts and sodium salts make up the bulk of this huge figure.

Each year, around 14 billion pounds of garbage dumped into the world’s oceans though, with most of this being harmful plastic.

Trade

More than 90 per cent of trade that occurs between countries is transferred by ship, while around half of communications between nations occur using underwater cables —subsea technologies included.