Each part of the ocean is a piece of a single whole

Water is necessary for all creatures to sustain life. This is not surprising, because life on our planet came out of the water. Water covers more than seventy percent of the surface of our planet.

Ocean division

All the water resources of the planet make up the Worldocean. Parts of the oceans exist in close relationship with each other. The largest division of water resources is carried out on the oceans, of which there are four on Earth: the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Indian and the Arctic. Some geographers are inclined to add to this list the fifth - the South, thus calling the waters washing the Antarctic. But most insist on only four. And already the seas, bays and straits are a part of the ocean. This means that each of the four giant expanses of water has its components. Oceanic boundaries exist only conditionally. On the one hand, this is the mainland and island part, and on the other, it is the parallels and meridians of the planet.

Name etymology

For the first time from European navigators the largestthe ocean of our planet saw Magellan in the sixteenth century. All the time of his journey with these waters was calm, so he got the name - Quiet. With the names of the rest of the oceans everything is clear. Atlantic got its name in honor of the legendary Atlanta - the hero of ancient Greek myths, who kept the sky on his shoulders in the far west of the Mediterranean. All waters located to the west in the seventeenth century received the name of the mythical hero. Indian was also called so thanks to the ancients, only to the Romans. Pliny before the era of our era in his writings called the ocean in honor of the most famous in those days eastern countries, but the name was generally accepted only from the sixteenth century, after the first round-the-world voyages. The Russian name "Arctic" was approved only in the twentieth century, because besides the location in the north, the ocean component is glaciers. While in most western countries it is called simply Arctic since the middle of the nineteenth century.

Seas of the planet

Seas, bays and straits in the total area of ​​the oceansoccupy from fifteen to eighteen percent. The only exception: the Arctic, the area of ​​the constituent parts of which more than seventy percent. The largest isolated part of the ocean is the seas. They are separated by parts of the mainland, islands or underwater elevations and at the same time they are distinguished by one of the signs from other waters - salinity level, temperatures or currents. Based on the degree of remoteness of the seas from the ocean waters, they are marginal (Barents), internal (Mediterranean) and inter-island (Philippine). The only exception to the list is the Sargasso Sea, the boundaries of which define algae of the same name. The Pacific Ocean occupies a huge area. Its area is almost fifty percent of the entire water surface of the planet. Therefore, parts of the Pacific Ocean are the largest in size, exceeding in size the smallest - the Arctic Ocean - several times.

Gulfs and their species

The gulfs are relatively small compared toSeas areas of water that fall into the continents. But they are also part of the concept of "World Ocean". The parts of the World Ocean that abound in bays are the expanses of the Atlantic in the region of Europe and the Northern waters washing Canada and Russia. If we classify the components of the oceans by the greatest distribution, then in quantitative terms in the first place there will certainly be bays. After all, this type includes all bays, fjords, estuaries, lagoons.

Even the first to see the Pacific Ocean is European -Spanish conquistador - called it the South Sea, because the view was only on the bay. There are, of course, huge bays, such as the Bengal or the Mexican, but most of them are quite small. And if scientists agree that there are about sixty seas on the planet, then there are several more bays, but it is almost impossible to calculate the exact number. And the largest number of bays - the constituent parts of the Atlantic Ocean.

Natural and artificial spills

Проливами называются довольно неширокие части oceans or seas, which serve as dividers for two land areas, but at the same time connect two reservoirs. Straits are divided by width, depth, depth, and also in the direction of water movement. They are very narrow, such as the Bosphorus between the Black and Marmara seas with a width of only seven hundred meters, and very wide, like the Drake Strait between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans with a width of over a thousand kilometers.

In addition to the straits, there is another prettyunique form of connecting water spaces between each other. But this is not part of the ocean. These are artificial channels that humanity is building to accelerate the movement of ships. First, people connected the river, then the sea. And relatively recently, by historical standards, the oceans began to connect with each other. The most famous are the Suez Canal, which connects the Mediterranean and Red Seas, and with them the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, as well as the Panama Canal, which accelerates the path from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.