Portal:Oceania/Selected article/March, 2006

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Pacific Ocean (from the Latin name Mare Pacificum, "peaceful sea", bestowed upon it by the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan) is the world's largest body of water. It encompasses a third of the Earth's surface, having an area of 179.7 million square kilometres (69.4 million sq miles).

Extending approximately 15,500 kilometres (9,600 miles) from the Bering Sea in the Arctic to the icy margins of Antarctica's Ross Sea in the south (although the Antarctic regions of the Pacific are sometimes described as part of the circumpolar Southern Ocean) the Pacific reaches its greatest east-west width at about 5°N latitude, where it stretches approximately 19,800 kilometres (12,300 miles) from Indonesia to the coast of Colombia. The western limit of the ocean is often placed at the Strait of Malacca.

The lowest point on earth—the Mariana Trench—lies some 10,911 metres (35,797 ft) below sea level.