I remember, as a schoolboy, I watched an interesting popular science film about the secrets of the World Ocean and began to look for it on the map. But I did not find the name "Mirovoy". There is no such ocean! It turned out that so called all the seas and oceans taken together.
What is the World Ocean
Our earth is called the "blue planet" for a reason, because water covers it by seventy percent! The World Ocean is a continuous watery shell of the earth, formed by oceans and seas, as well as bays and straits. This name was invented by a French scientist Clare de Florie in the 17th century. The oceans are usually divided into Quiet(has the largest area - 179 million km²), Atlantic(the mysterious Bermuda Triangle is located here), Arctic(surface water temperature is only + 1 ° С) and Indian oceans. All oceans are separated from each other by continents.
The oceans are a source of natural resources
According to scientists, the World Ocean has natural resources that are not inferior in volume to land resources. These riches include:
- water... The composition of sea water is unique and has 75 chemical elements (salt, iodine, magnesium, gold and others);
- mineral resources... Coastal areas (or shelves) contain vast amounts of gas and oil. The ocean floor is rich in reserves of mineral formations with a high concentration of iron and manganese (nodules). Thus, the Pacific Ocean has the largest volume of nodules;
- energy potential... Stations operating on the energy of a tidal wave are being designed. There are 25 places on the ground where the tidal wave height reaches 20 meters. In our country, there are such places on the Barents, Okhotsk and White Seas;
- biological resource... The waters of the World Ocean contain 55 billion tons of biological mass (plants and living organisms)! Including fish is 20 billion tons. The "richest" seas are the Okhotsk, Japanese and Norwegian seas.
Ecology of the World Ocean
Today, the problem of pollution of ocean waters has become global. Every year, garbage is dumped into the ocean, weighing three times the weight of the fish caught. The northern region of the Pacific Ocean is especially polluted. The garbage stain weighs hundreds of millions of tons and is made up mostly of plastic. Plastic, decomposing in the sun, resembles plankton in shape, and fish eat it and die. There are frequent accidents on ships carrying hazardous radioactive waste or oil.
