- The lowest known point on Earth is called the Challenger Deep, it is 36,200 feet deep, in the Marianas Trench in the western Pacific. To get an idea of how deep that is, if you could take Mt. Everest and place it at the bottom of the trench there would still be over a mile of ocean above it.
- Antarctica has as much ice as the Atlantic Ocean has water.
- The Blue whale is the largest animal on our planet ever (exceeding the size of the greatest known dinosaurs) and has a heart the size of a Volkswagen.
- Each year, two times as much rubbish is dumped into the world’s oceans as the weight of fish caught.
- The swordfish and marlin are the fastest fish in the ocean reaching speeds up to 121 kilometers or 75 mph in quick bursts; the blue-fin tuna may reach sustained speeds up to 90 kph or 55 mph.
- Sharks attack some 50-75 people each year worldwide on average, with perhaps 8-12 fatalities on average. On the flip side, we kill somewhere between 20-100 million sharks every year.
- 90% of all volcanic activity occurs in the oceans.
- The speed of sound in water is 4,708 feet per second – nearly five times faster than the speed of sound in air.
- The highest tides in the world are at the Bay of Fundy, which separates New Brunswick from Nova Scotia. At some times of the year the difference between high and low tide is 53.4 feet. That’s about the same as a four-story building.
- Because the architecture and chemistry of coral is so similar to human bone, coral has been used to replace bone grafts in helping human bone to heal quickly and cleanly.
- The pressure at the deepest point in the ocean is more than 11,318 tons/sq m, or the equivalent of one person trying to support 50 jumbo jets.
- One study of a deep-sea community revealed 898 species from more than 100 families and a dozen phyla in an area about half the size of a tennis court. More than half of these were new to science.
*Photo Credits: photos by Guille Avalos, Fabi Fliervoet, bbialek905, Sam and Ian on flickr
References:
Ocean Planet
Mote Marine Laboratory
National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC)
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