Pacific Ocean – Beloved Planet (original) (raw)

The exploration of the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean by Europeans began in the age of great geographical discoveries. Today, the Pacific plays an increasingly important role in the life of mankind.

The largest ocean on planet Earth

The Pacific Ocean is the largest ocean on the planet. Numerous islands and atolls scattered across its vast expanse, barely visible on the world map, turn out to be real gems of the sea, such as the group of islands in Micronesia.

The Pacific Ocean covers one third of the earth’s surface. It is larger in area than all the continents combined.

History and geography

In 1513, the Spanish navigator Vasco Nunez de Balboa was the first white man to see the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, which he called the Great Ocean. And just seven years later, in 1520, the Portuguese navigator Fernand Magellan made the first circumnavigation of the globe. He discovered a passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean – later named the Tierra del Fuego Strait in his honor – that allowed sailors to avoid the dangerous waters around Cape Horn. For an attempt to get to know the natives of one of the islands he discovered Magellan, like many other discoverers, had to pay with his own life.

Until the end of the XIX century, few Europeans managed to settle on the fabulous islands of the southern seas. However, the favorable strategic position made the conquest of these lands by colonial states inevitable. For strategic reasons, world powers are still trying to maintain their presence in the Pacific Ocean today. The USA owns the Mariana Islands, the Palau Islands and Hawaii, Russia owns the Kuril Islands (a constant subject of territorial disputes with Japan), France owns French Polynesia, New Caledonia, the Wallis and Futuna Islands. Some British overseas territories in the region have been turned into military bases. But the importance of the Pacific is not limited to the military sphere. Countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan, not to mention Japan and Australia, produce an increasing percentage of the world’s GDP.

The Pacific Ocean, or the Great Ocean as its discoverer called it, is twice the size of the Atlantic Ocean. Along the continental margins, its waters are subdivided into seas. Off the coast of East and Southeast Asia, these are the Banda and Celebes Seas, the South Sea, the South China Sea, the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan. Off the coast of Kamchatka, the Pacific Ocean forms the Sea of Okhotsk, and high in the north, the Bering Sea. The deepest sea trenches of the Earth are located in the Pacific Ocean, for example, the depth of the Mariana Trench is 11,034 meters. There are thousands of islands scattered across the vast expanse of water, which can be conditionally divided into two categories. The first category includes islands of volcanic origin, such as Hawaii or Japan. The small Aleutian and Kuril Islands form the so-called fire belt in the North Pacific. The second category is represented by coral islands – reefs, which are located along the equator. They owe their origin to the activity of coral polyps.

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