Geographic location of the Pacific: description and features

The Pacific Ocean (a map of the world provides an opportunity to visually understand where it is) - a constituent part of the world's water area. He is the largest on planet Earth. By volume of water and area, the object described occupies half the volume of the whole water area. In addition, it is in the Pacific Ocean that the deepest depressions of the Earth lie. According to the number of islands in the water area, it also ranks first. Washes the shores of all the continents of the earth, except Africa.

Characteristic

As stated before, the geographic location of the Pacific Ocean is conditioned in such a way that it occupies a large part of the planet. Its area is 178 million km ² . The volume of water - 710 million km ² . From the north to the south, the ocean stretches for 16 thousand km, and from the east to the west - 18 thousand km. The entire land of the planet Earth will have an area less than the Pacific Ocean by 30 million km ² .

Borders

The geographical location of the Pacific allows it to occupy an impressive area in both the Southern and Northern Hemisphere. However, due to the large amount of land in the latter, the water area is noticeably narrowing towards the north.

The boundaries of the Pacific Ocean are as follows:

• In the east: it washes the coasts of two American continents.
• In the north: it borders on the southeastern part of Eurasia, the islands of Malaysia and Indonesia, the eastern edge of Australia.
• In the south: the ocean rests on the ice of Antarctica.
• In the north: through the Bering Strait, separating American Alaska and Russian Chukotka, merges with the waters of the Arctic Ocean.
• In the southeast: along the Drake Channel, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean (the conventional boundary from Cape Drake to Cape Shternek).
• In the southwest: meets with the Indian Ocean (the conditional border from the island of Tasmania and to the shortest, meridionally located point off the coast of Antarctica).

The Challenger's Abyss

Features of the geographical location of the Pacific allow us to speak about its unique mark, which characterizes the distance from the bottom to the surface of the waters. The maximum depth of the Pacific Ocean, as well as the entire World Ocean as a whole, is almost 11 km. This gutter is located in the Mariana Trench, which, in turn, is located in the western part of the water area, not far from the islands of the same name.

The first attempt to measure the depth of the cavity was tried in 1875 with the help of the English Corvette Challenger. For this, a deep-water lot was used (a special instrument for measuring the distance to the bottom). The first recorded indicator during the study of the trench was a mark of just over 8,000 m. In 1957, a Soviet expedition took a measurement of the depth. Based on the results of the work done, the data of previous studies were changed. It is worth noting that our scientists got closer to the real value. The depth of the gutter, according to the results of measurements, was 11 023 m. This figure was considered correct for a long time, and in reference books and textbooks it was indicated as the deepest point of the planet. However, already in the 2000s, thanks to the appearance of new more accurate instruments helping to determine different values, the present, the most accurate depth of the gutter was set to 10,994 m (according to the 2011 studies). This point of the Mariana Trench was called "The Challenger's Abyss". So unique and especially the geographical position of the Pacific Ocean.

The gutter itself is stretched along the islands by almost 1,500 km. It has sharp slopes and a flat bottom, stretching for 1.5 km. The pressure at the depth of the Mariana Trench is several dozen times higher than at small oceanic depths. There was a depression at the junction of two tectonic plates - the Philippines and the Pacific.

Other areas

Near the Mariana Trench there is a number of transitional regions from the mainland to the ocean: the Aleutian, Japanese, Kuril-Kamchatka, Tonga-Kermadec and others. All of them are located along the fault tectonic plates. This region is the most seismically active. Together with the eastern transition regions (within the mountain regions of the western outskirts of the American continents), they form the so-called Pacific volcanic fire ring. Most of the existing and extinct geological formations are located within its boundaries.

Seas

The description of the geographical location of the Pacific Ocean must necessarily concern the seas. At the margins of the ocean coast there are quite a large number of them. They concentrated more in the Northern Hemisphere, off the coast of Eurasia. They are more than 20, with a total area (including straits and bays) of 31 million km ² . The largest seas of the Pacific Ocean are the Okhotsk, Barents, Yellow, South- and East-Chinese, Philippine and others. Near the coast of Antarctica are five Pacific water bodies (Ross, Durville, Somov, etc.). The eastern coast of the ocean is uniform, the shore is poorly cut, difficult to access and does not have seas. However, there are 3 gulfs here - Panama, California and Alaska.

The Islands

Of course, a detailed description of the geographic location of the Pacific Ocean also includes such a feature as the huge amount of land located directly in the water area. There are more than 10 thousand islands and island archipelagoes of different sizes and origin. Most of them are volcanic. They are located within the subtropical and tropical climatic zones. Formed by a volcanic eruption, many of the islands are overgrown with corals. Subsequently, some of them again went under the water, and on the surface there was only a coral layer. Usually it has the form of a circle or semicircle. Such an island is called an atoll. The largest is located in the border of the Marshall Islands - Kwajlane.

In this water area, in addition to small islands of volcanic and coral origin, there are the largest areas of the planet's land. This is quite natural, given the geographic location of the Pacific Ocean. New Guinea and Kalimantan are islands of the western part of the water area. They respectively occupy 2 and 3 place in the area around the world. Also in the Pacific Ocean is the largest archipelago of the planet - the Great Sunda Islands, consisting of 4 large land areas and more than 1,000 small ones.