Interesting facts about the seas and oceans

1. Each year, 50-70 people attack sharks, about ten of these attacks result in death.

Shark attacks are widely covered in the press, so many people consider them ruthless killers, however, according to statistics, annually a much larger number of people are killed by elephants, bees, crocodiles, etc.

On the other hand, between 20 and one hundred million sharks die annually from human activities related to fishing.

2. Of all the known species of sharks (and there are about 350 of them) up to a length of 1.5, 80% of them will not grow, they simply are not able to harm a person, many are in principle very rare and meeting them in the ocean is a great success.

A total of 32 species of sharks in the entire history of our relationship with them attacked people, another 36 are classified as potentially dangerous, although there have been no recorded attacks.

3. Almost all sharks over eight meters long are eighty centimeters of potential danger, but only three species of sharks attacked people many times: a large white shark, a tiger shark and a bull shark.

They are ubiquitous and can reach enormous size, their main diet is marine mammals and turtles.

Most often, swimmers, divers, surfers were attacked by a great white shark. 4. According to scientists, under the water column is from half to 80% of all life on Earth, the seas and oceans make up 99% of the space for life of various life forms.

Currently, we have managed to study only 10% of this space.

85% of the area and 90% of the volume of the seas and oceans are deep places.

The average depth of the ocean is 3795 meters, the average land height is 840.

5. At present, about 1.5 million species of marine life have been discovered and classified by scientists, according to the most conservative estimates of the total in the ocean, there are about 2 million, and the most daring - 50 million.

6. Oceans cover 71% of the surface of our planet (this indicator is gradually increasing) and contain 91% of all the water that is on Earth.

Fresh water on Earth is only 1%, the rest is in a frozen state (glaciers, etc.).

7. Almost 90% of all world volcanic activity occurs in the ocean.

8. Fundy Bay (USA, Canada) is the place where the highest tides occur, water rises to a height of 16 meters 30 centimeters, which is comparable to the height of a three-story house.

9. The longest mountain range in the world is the Mid-Ocean Range, its length is over 50 thousand kilometers, it is four times longer than the Andes, the Himalayas, the Rocky Mountains (in the Cordilleras) combined.

10. At the deepest point in the ocean, the pressure is approximately 11,318 tons per square meter, for comparison: this is equivalent to if one person tried to keep 50 passenger airliners on himself.

11. In the upper 3 meters of the ocean, the same amount of heat is retained as in the entire atmosphere of our planet.

12. The lowest point on Earth (known) is the Abyss Challenger, its depth is 11034 meters, it is located in the Mariana Trench (western part of the Pacific Ocean). For clarity, even if you take Mount Everest and put it there, you will still have about one and a half kilometers to the surface.

The lowest place on land is the Dead Sea. 13. Underwater earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and landslides can cause tsunamis.

The largest recorded tsunami was 60 meters above sea level, and its speed was several hundred kilometers per hour, the cause of its occurrence was an earthquake of magnitude 8.9 points, it happened in the Gulf of Alaska in 1899.

14. The average depth of the Atlantic Ocean with the seas is 3332 meters, without them - 3926 meters.

15. The Pacific Ocean is the largest water body in the world, it occupies about a third of the entire surface of the Earth, there are more than 25 thousand islands on it, this number exceeds the number of all other islands in the world combined.

The area of the Pacific Ocean is 179.7 million square kilometers. 16. The warm course of Kuroshio (off the coast of Japan) is the largest current in the world.

Its speed can be from 20 to 121 kilometers per day (1.6 - 4.8 km / h), its depth is 1006 meters.

The closest in value to the Kuroshio Current is the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean, its speed is slightly lower - 97 kilometers per day.

A hundred times more water moves in the Gulf Stream than in all the rivers of the Earth, at a speed 300 times the current of the Amazon River - the largest river in the world.

17. Over the past 100 years, the water level in the ocean has risen from 10 to 25 centimeters, scientists expect acceleration of the process of raising the water level.

This will happen even if the temperature on Earth ceases to rise and the climate stabilizes, the fact is that the oceans react very slowly to any climate change.

For comparison: 10 thousand years ago, the ocean level was 110 meters lower than the present; provided all the ice on the planet melts, sea level will rise by 66 meters. 18. As the sea water cools, its density increases, it freezes at a temperature of 1.9 degrees.

The maximum density of fresh water is achieved at a temperature of 4 degrees, and it freezes, as you know, at 0 degrees.

The average sea water temperature is only 3.5 degrees.

19. In the frozen state on Antarctica is the same amount of water that contains the entire Atlantic Ocean.

20. Annually, the Arctic produces from 10 to 50 thousand icebergs, the average duration of which is about four years.

21. One of the causes of seawater pollution with toxic substances is air pollution, 33% of all toxic substances enter the water from the air.

Another 44% of pollutants enter sea water from rivers and streams.

22.Every year, garbage is thrown into the waters of the oceans, the mass of which is three times the mass of the entire annual catch of fish on Earth.

23. About a third of world oil is produced in the seas and oceans, the most popular places for its production are the North Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Gulf of Mexico.

24. The record for free diving belongs to Jacques Mayol, he was able to dive to a depth of 86 meters without any breathing equipment.

25. One sip of seawater contains millions of bacterial cells, hundreds of thousands of phytoplankton and tens of thousands of zooplankton.

26.The Great Barrier Reef, stretching over 2,300 kilometers and covering an area exceeding the area of Great Britain, by the way, it is clearly visible even from outer space, is the most populated structure on the planet.

Its reefs consist of 400 species of coral, home to 2,000 different species of fish, 4,000 species of mollusks and countless invertebrates.

The name Great Barrier Reef is not accidental, because the whole structure consists of almost 3 thousand separate reefs and more than a thousand islands.

27. Fish is the main product that provides humanity with proteins (proteins). Unfortunately, in most regions, the catch is at a level higher than safe, which means that populations simply do not have time to recover, in some places the situation becomes truly threatening.

28. Up to 90% of the global commodity turnover falls on sea vessels, and more than 50% of the world's communication cables are laid along the seabed.

29. Marlin and swordfish are the fastest fish on Earth, they can briefly reach speeds of 121 kilometers per hour.

Bluefin tuna is capable of moving at a speed of 90 kilometers per hour for a very long time.

30. Blue whales are the largest animals that exist and have ever existed on earth, they are larger than even the largest dinosaurs we know, an interesting fact: the heart of a blue whale can exceed the size of a small car.

31. Many fish can change sex throughout their lives.

Some rare deep-sea fish have two sets of genitals.

32. Life originated in the sea from 3,100 billion to 3.4 billion years ago, the first life on land appeared about 400 million years ago, which happened relatively recently.

33. The structure and composition of coral are very similar to human bones, which is why corals were used instead of bone implants, with their help the bones heal quickly and accurately.