As humanity, although we talk more about space full of unknowns, other planets and galaxies, there is a great unsolved mystery much closer to us; oceans. The oceans, with their dark waters reaching a depth of thousands of meters and their gigantic size covering 70% of the earth, are also home to the vast majority of living species on earth.
These big, mysterious and fascinating waters also show us how much we still don’t even know about the planet we live on. What we know gives ample motivation to understand the oceans more.
Only 20% of the oceans have yet been mapped
Although the oceans appear as blue spaces when we take a world map in our hands, they have a floor full of volcanoes, mountains and plains. Just like blacks. But we only have maps of a tiny 20% of these huge areas that cover 70% of the entire planet. The rest is still a big unknown for us.
Oceans are home to 94% of life on earth
In our search for life on different planets, the first indispensable sign we look at is ‘water’. Because we know that a small pond can provide the necessary conditions for life. These puddles where it all began were oceans for our planet. The oceans formed on our planet, which started to cool, became the source of life.
This source is still the most important existence area of life on earth. Because, despite the uncountable number of creatures living on land, the oceans host approximately 94% of life on our planet. Moreover, it is thought that there may be many creatures in the oceans that we have not yet met.
The world’s largest and many ‘smallest’ creatures also live in the oceans
Blue whales are the largest creatures on our planet, with a length of up to 33 meters and a weight of up to 150 tons. These fascinating creatures, unfortunately, are in danger of extinction due to their hunting activities as well as the reasons such as ocean pollution and sea traffic in the oceans.
The oceans, which are home to giant blue whales, are also home to the smallest creatures in the world. Many ultra-small bacteria and protozoa, and many tiny fish in the ‘animal’ class, continue to live in the ocean while holding the title of ‘smallest’.
The source of more than half of the breath we take is the oceans.
Although forests come to mind first when it comes to the world’s oxygen source, the correct answer is actually the oceans. Although an exact rate cannot be given, the oceans provide 50 to 80% of the oxygen we breathe.
The reason why the oceans are such a rich source of oxygen is the phytoplankton and marine plants living in the oceans. Considering that 70% of the planet is covered by oceans and there are many more plants living in these oceans than on land, the situation is quite plausible.
Oceans regulate and maintain our planet’s climate balance
The oceans are the largest source of water vapor, which tempers our planet’s climate and also creates precipitation. The oceans, which are already very critical for the climate in this respect, are also trying to fix one of the biggest damages we have done to the planet.
The oceans, which naturally remove most of the human-induced carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere, do this by ‘absorbing’ carbon dioxide. The oceans, which absorb other greenhouse gases besides carbon dioxide and try to maintain the climate balance, unfortunately continue to warm while doing this.
Although at first glance it seems that it preserves the natural balance by minimizing the damage we do, in fact, the oceans, which absorb the human-made greenhouse gases, are getting warmer. The warming of the oceans, on the other hand, results in many bad situations, from the deterioration of the balance and from precipitation to temperatures, from upsetting the ecological balance in the oceans to damaging oxygen production.
Earth’s only gigantic ‘structure’ of living organisms is in the ocean
Have you heard of the Great Barrier Reef? The Great Barrier Reef, consisting of millions of coral polyps, is known as the largest reef system in the world, with an area of 344,400 km², spread over 2,600 km, consisting of 2,900 separate reefs and 900 islands. This gigantic structure is made up of living organisms and is home to many species of fish and creatures.
The Great Barrier Reef, which has unfortunately entered a serious extinction process with the effect of global warming, is located in the Coral Sea off the Queensland coast of Australia. Although the Australian government has started efforts to save the reef after the ‘extinction’ trend that has intensified in the past years, the danger of the reef continues.
‘World’s largest migration’ occurs every day in oceans
Scientists studying the oceans basically examine this huge body of water in three parts. The first 200 meters below the surface is called the ‘Sunlight zone’, while the part after 200 meters up to 1000 meters deep is known as the ‘Twilight zone’. Then comes the batial zone, where sunlight never reaches.
The twilight zone is the part that has caught the attention of scientists the most because we still have a lot to learn about the creatures living in the area and the ecosystem in general. Known information is quite remarkable.
Some of the creatures living in this area that continues deep down this 800 meters under the water, swim hundreds of meters up to the surface every night to feed. Then they return to their nests in the depths of the ocean. This ‘ritual’, which takes place every night and is practiced by perhaps millions of living things, is referred to as the world’s greatest migration by scientists.
There are rivers, waterfalls, lakes in the oceans…
Strange as it may sound, there are rivers, waterfalls and ‘lakes’ that have formed in the oceans. What is effective in the formation of these impressive structures is the variation of the temperature of the water with the different salinity and density ratios that occur in the ocean water.
The deepest trench on the planet, the Mariana Trench, is located in the Pacific Ocean.
The Mariana Trench is the deepest known point on Earth. The pit, which is approximately 11,000 meters deep, is so deep that almost 1.5 of our planet’s highest mountain above sea level, Everest, could fit in it.
On January 23, 1960, Lieutenant Donald Walsh of the US Navy and Jacques Piccard, a Swiss scientist, first landed in this frightening pit, which went down 11,000 meters under the water. The first dive that followed was performed by the famous director James Cameron in 2012. Finally, in 2019, Victor Vescovo made a dive. In this dive, the plastic waste, which was found at a depth of 11 thousand kilometers, caused a lot of controversy at that time.
‘Point Nemo’, the world’s most isolated and far from land point, is also a ‘space dump’ in the middle of the ocean
Think of a point on Earth, thousands of kilometers from the land and humanity, completely isolated. In fact, the people closest to him are in space…
There is such a point and it is known as ‘Point Nemo’. Point Nemo, which is approximately 1600 kilometers from the nearest land strip, is 2700 kilometers away from the nearest settlement. So much so that the astronauts on the International Space Station, which orbits around the world at an altitude of about 415 kilometers, are the people who can come closest to the region from time to time.
But we have succeeded in turning even ‘the most isolated spot in the world’ hundreds of kilometers away from this person into a kind of garbage. Spacecraft, satellites and other space ‘garbage’ that have expired are dumped in this area, which is also known as the ‘spacecraft graveyard’.
BONUS: The oceans host approximately 8 million tons of new plastic waste each year…
Unfortunately, the oceans are rapidly and irreversibly turning into gigantic plastic dumps. An average of 8 million tons of plastic waste is dumped into the oceans every year. These wastes turn the ecological structure of the oceans upside down, creating giant garbage islands and almost destroying life.
Unfortunately, as humanity, we insist on preparing our own end in this matter, as in many other issues, and we continue to use plastic. We leave the scenarios of what may happen to us when there is no life in the oceans in the future, based on the information in this article, to your imagination….
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