The Ocean


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Freakzilla
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The Ocean

Post by Freakzilla »

My father-in-law has access to a private condo on the beach in Florida and my wife is going to take the kids down there for a few days.

My three youngest kids (3,4,7) have never seen it before.

I was wondering what to tell them about it, especially my seven-year-old. How would you describe it to someone who's never seen it? What warnings would you give them? Especially the seven-year-old, he asked my wife if it was like grandpa's lake. :lol:

I believe they'll be on the Gulf Coast. He's a big fan of Jaws, BTW.

Here's to swimmin' with bowlegged women!
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A Thing of Eternity
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Re: The Ocean

Post by A Thing of Eternity »

I would just say that it's like a lake that is so big you might as well say it goes on forever, so big it would take you 7 or 8 years to walk around it.

That might give something of the right idea. :wink:
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Re: The Ocean

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It's an average of four miles deep. It's three miles to the grocery store from our house so that might give him some scope.
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Re: The Ocean

Post by Nekhrun »

Tell them it's okay to poke the man-o-war with sticks but don't step on them. Also tell them to enjoy Florida before it's all underwater.
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Re: The Ocean

Post by Serkanner »

Have him read Dune.
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Re: The Ocean

Post by Omphalos »

Tell them to watch out for that undertow!

And the salt in the water comes from all the whale piss.
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Re: The Ocean

Post by Freakzilla »

The Immense Ocean

Imagine that you are an ant on Mount Everest. That's about the size relationship of one human being to the ocean.

Everything about the ocean is immense — it has the tallest mountains in the world and the deepest valleys. It covers 72 percent of the Earth's surface. That's 139 million square miles or 139 with 19 zeros after it. And it's not just wide. It's deep — 12,460 feet deep on average. That's 10 Empire State buildings stacked on top of each other!

The Pacific Ocean is, by far, the largest ocean. Its surface area covers 64 million square miles or approximately one-third of Earth's surface. It is bigger than all of Earth's continents put together.

The deepest place in the ocean is the Mariana Trench. At a depth of 7 miles, it's 6 times deeper than the Grand Canyon. That's deeper than Mt. Everest is tall!

The world's longest mountain chain, the mid-ocean ridge, is in the ocean. It is four times longer than the Andes, the Rockies, and the Himalayas combined!

Sharks attack some 50-75 people each year worldwide, with perhaps 8-12 fatalities, according to data compiled in the International Shark Attack File (ISAF). Although shark attacks get a lot of attention, this is far less than the number of people killed each year by elephants, bees, crocodiles, lightning or many other natural dangers. On the other side of the ledger, we kill somewhere between 20-100 million sharks every year through fishing activities.

Of the 350 or so shark species, about 80% grow to less than 1.6 m and are unable to hurt people or rarely encounter people. Only 32 species have been documented in attacks on humans, and an additional 36 species are considered potentially dangerous.

Almost any shark 1.8 m or longer is a potential danger, but three species have been identified repeatedly in attacks: the Great white, Tiger, and Bull sharks. All three are found worldwide, reach large sizes and eat large prey such as marine mammals or sea turtles. More attacks on swimmers, free divers, scuba divers, surfers and boats have been reported for the great white shark than for any other species. However, some 80% of all shark attacks probably occur in the tropics and subtropics, where other shark species dominate and Great white sharks are relatively rare.

An estimated 50-80% of all life on earth is found under the ocean surface and the oceans contain 99% of the living space on the planet. Less than 10% of that space has been explored by humans. 85% of the area and 90% of the volume constitute the dark, cold environment we call the deep sea. The average depth of the ocean is 3,795 m. The average height of the land is 840 m.

"Currently, scientists have named and successfully classified over 1.5 million species. It is estimated that there are as little as 2 million to as many as 50 million more species that have not yet been found and/or have been incorrectly classified."

According to World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) there are currently 199,146 named marine species.

So, there are at least 199,146 marine species but there are most likely at least 750,000 marine species (50% of 1.5 million species) and possibly as many as 25 million marine species (50% of 50 million species).

The oceans cover 71% of the Earth's surface and contain 97% of the Earth's water. Less than 1% is fresh water, and 2-3% is contained in glaciers and ice caps.

90% of all volcanic activity occurs in the oceans.

The speed of sound in water is 1,435 m/sec - 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 16.3 m, taller than a three-story building.

Earth's longest mountain range is the Mid-Ocean Ridge more than 50,000 km in length, which winds around the globe from the Arctic Ocean to the Atlantic, skirting Africa, Asia and Australia, and crossing the Pacific to the west coast of North America. It is four times longer than the Andes, Rockies, and Himalayas combined.

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.

The top ten feet of the ocean hold as much heat as the entire atmosphere.

The lowest known point on Earth, called the Challenger Deep, is 11,034 m 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. The Dead Sea is the Earth's lowest land point with an elevation of 396 m below sea level.

Undersea earthquakes, volcanoes and landslides can cause tsunamis (Japanese word meaning "harbor wave"), or seismic sea waves. The largest recorded tsunami measured 60 m above sea level caused by an 8.9 magnitude earthquake in the gulf of Alaska in 1899 traveling at hundreds of km/hr.

The average depth of the Atlantic Ocean, with its adjacent seas, is 3,332 m; without them it is 3,926 m. The greatest depth, 8,381 m, is in the Puerto Rico Trench.

The Pacific Ocean, the world's largest water body, occupies a third of the Earth's surface. The Pacific contains about 25,000 islands (more than the total number in the rest of the world's oceans combined), almost all of which are found south of the equator. The Pacific covers an area of 179.7 million sq km.

The Kuroshio Current, off the shores of Japan, is the largest current. It can travel between 40-121 km/day at 1.6-4.8 kph, and extends some 1,006 m deep. The Gulf Stream is close to this current's speed. The Gulf Stream is a well known current of warm water in the Atlantic Ocean. At a speed of 97 km/day, the Gulf Stream moves a 100 times as much water as all the rivers on earth and flows at a rate 300 times faster than the Amazon, which is the world's largest river.

A given area in an ocean upwelling zone or deep estuary is as productive as the same area in rain forests, most crops and intensive agriculture. They all produce between 150-500 grams of Carbon per square meter per year.

The sea level has risen with an average of 10-25 cm over the past 100 years and scientists expect this rate to increase. Sea levels will continue rising even if the climate has stabilized, because the ocean reacts slowly to changes. 10,000 years ago the ocean level was about 110 m lower than it is now. If all the world's ice melted, the oceans would rise 66 m.

The density of sea water becomes more dense as it becomes colder, right down to its freezing point of -1.9°C unlike fresh water which is most dense at 4°C, well above its freezing point of 0°C. The average temperature of all ocean water is about 3.5°C.

Antarctica has as much ice as the Atlantic Ocean has water.

The Arctic produces 10,000-50,000 icebergs annually. The amount produced in the Antarctic regions is inestimable. Icebergs normally have a four-year life-span; they begin entering shipping lanes after about three years.

Air pollution is responsible for 33% of the toxic contaminants that end up in oceans and coastal waters. About 44% of the toxic contaminants come from runoff via rivers and streams.

Each year, three times as much rubbish is dumped into the world's oceans as the weight of fish caught.

Oil is one of the ocean's greatest resources. Nearly one-third of the world's oil comes from offshore fields in our oceans. Areas most popular for oil drilling are the Arabian Gulf, the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.

Refined oil is also responsible for polluting the ocean. More oil reaches the oceans each year as a result of leaking automobiles and other non-point sources than the oil spilled in Prince William Sound by the Exxon Valdez.

The record for the deepest free dive is held by Jacques Mayol. He dove to an astounding depth of 86 m without any breathing equipment.

A mouthful of seawater may contain millions of bacterial cells, hundreds of thousands of phytoplankton and tens of thousands of zooplankton.

The Great Barrier Reef, measuring 2,300 km in length covering an area more extensive than Britain, is the largest living structure on Earth and can be seen from space. Its reefs are made up of 400 species of coral, supporting well over 2,000 different fish, 4,000 species of mollusc and countless other invertebrates. It should really be named 'Great Barrier of Reefs', as it is not one long solid structure but made up of nearly 3,000 individual reefs and 1,000 islands. Other huge barrier reefs include the barrier reefs of New Caledonia, the Mesoamerican (Belize) barrier reef, and the large barrier reefs of Fiji. The largest coral atoll complexes occur in the Maldive-Lakshadweep ecoregion of the central Indian Ocean and in Micronesia.

Fish supply the greatest percentage of the world's protein consumed by humans and most of the world's major fisheries are being fished at levels above their maximum sustainable yield; some regions are severely overfished.

More than 90% of the trade between countries is carried by ships and about half the communications between nations use underwater cables.

The swordfish and marlin are the fastest fish in the ocean reaching speeds up to 121 kph in quick bursts; the bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) may reach sustained speeds up to 90 kph.

The Blue whale is the largest animal on our planet ever (exceeding the size of the greatest known dinosaurs) and has a heart is the size of a Volkswagen.

The Oarfish (Regalecus glesne), is the longest bony fish in the world. It has a snakelike body sporting a magnificent red fin along its 15.25 m length, a horselike face and blue gills, and accounts for many sea-serpent sightings.

Many fish can change sex during the course of their lives. Others, especially rare deep-sea fish, have both male and female sex organs.

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.

Life began in the seas 3.1 billion to 3.4 billion years ago. Land dwellers appeared 400 million years ago, relatively recently in geologic time.

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.

References

Smithsonian Institution's Ocean Planet exhibition and from the book Ocean Planet: Writings and Images of the Sea, by Peter Benchley and Judith Gradwohl
Mote Marine Laboratory
NGDC Tsunami Database
USGS - This Dynamic Earth - The Story of Plate Tectonics
Unit Conversions provided by FU Berlin, Institute of Chemistry
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A Thing of Eternity
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Re: The Ocean

Post by A Thing of Eternity »

I knew sound travelled faster through denser mediums, but I didn't realise it was 5 times faster in water. Neato.
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Re: The Ocean

Post by SadisticCynic »

Changing mediums is quite interesting, for example if a charged particle passes through a medium faster than light would travel in said medium it gives off a blue glow called Cerenkov radiation.

[Back to topic]: I find the shark deaths interesting. It always annoys me when there is a documentary saying how awful sharks are when hardly any deaths are due to them. Also didn't realise the density changes for saltwater and freshwater are so different.
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Re: The Ocean

Post by inhuien »

Here's a cool image showing the ratio of water to the Earth as cubic (i guess) miles.
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Earth is an ocean planet. More than 70% of its surface is covered by ocean with an average depth of just over two miles. But how much water is there really? In this illustration, the sphere on the left represents Earth with all of the water removed. The blue sphere to the right shows the approximate volume of all of Earth's water. The tiny blue dot on the far right represents the available fresh water. Another way to think of it is that if we represented the size of Earth with a basketball, all the water on the planet would fit into a ping pong ball and the available fresh water would be smaller than a popcorn kernel. Despite being such a water-rich planet, drinking water is one of our most precious resources.
(Illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
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Re: The Ocean

Post by Freakzilla »

SadisticCynic wrote:Also didn't realise the density changes for saltwater and freshwater are so different.
That's one of the problems with the fresh water polar caps melting into the oceans. It affects the vertical currents that circulate cold water at lower depths and warm water near the surface. That, in turn, affects the Jet Stream.
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Re: The Ocean

Post by A Thing of Eternity »

SadisticCynic wrote:Changing mediums is quite interesting, for example if a charged particle passes through a medium faster than light would travel in said medium it gives off a blue glow called Cerenkov radiation.
I've seen pictures of that, pretty neat.
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Re: The Ocean

Post by GamePlayer »

inhuien wrote:Here's a cool image showing the ratio of water to the Earth as cubic (i guess) miles.
Image
Earth is an ocean planet. More than 70% of its surface is covered by ocean with an average depth of just over two miles. But how much water is there really? In this illustration, the sphere on the left represents Earth with all of the water removed. The blue sphere to the right shows the approximate volume of all of Earth's water. The tiny blue dot on the far right represents the available fresh water. Another way to think of it is that if we represented the size of Earth with a basketball, all the water on the planet would fit into a ping pong ball and the available fresh water would be smaller than a popcorn kernel. Despite being such a water-rich planet, drinking water is one of our most precious resources.
(Illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Seriously cool. I like it!
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Freakzilla
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Re: The Ocean

Post by Freakzilla »

I love those size comparisons.

Like... if the earth was the size of a newsprint period the sun would be the size of a Cadillac and four miles away... it puts things in perspective.
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Re: The Ocean

Post by SadisticCynic »

Another one is if the nucleus of an atom was a metre in diameter, the nearest electron would be like 10km away. Really shocking how much empty (kind of) space there is at that level. In terms of the planets I like it when you see a picture of the Earth beside other planets, even if the scale is wrong the sense of proportion is still there - one million earths fitting inside the Sun kind of thing.
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