11 Pretty Awesome Facts About the Pacific Ocean

Visible from the West Coast of the United States (as well as North and South America), the Pacific Ocean is an impressive body of water. When we talk about the Pacific, we're discussing a major subset of the "world" or "global" ocean. That's the great, interconnected body of seawater covering 71 percent of Earth's outer surface, spanning both the northern and southern hemispheres.

Geographers and scientists divide this into five major sections. Among them, the Pacific Ocean is the largest, followed by the Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, Southern Ocean and Arctic Ocean.

Born in 1480, the Portuguese navigator and explorer Ferdinand Magellan would go on to sail between the southernmost tip of mainland South America and the Tierra del Fuego archipelago. Now called the "Strait of Magellan," that expanse is an Atlantic-Pacific connection point.

In late 1520, Magellan entered the vast ocean to the west of the Americas. He described the calm waters he found there as "pacific" (i.e., "peaceful"), and the rest is history.

Humans can't survive without shelter, food and fresh water. Unfortunately, the latter is kind of rare in the grand scheme. You see, fresh water makes up just 3 percent of our planet's total water supply. And most of that is inside glaciers and ice caps.

The remaining 97 percent of Earth's water resides within the oceans and their seas. These bodies don't get equal shares, by the way. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that the Pacific encompasses 49.4 percent of all the water in our Global Ocean.

With an average depth of 13,000 feet (4,000 meters), the Pacific is the deepest Global Ocean subdivision by far. Furthermore, its volume is over twice the size of the Atlantic's.

Mount Everest gets all the attention, but the Himalayan landmark is significantly shorter than Mauna Kea, an inactive Hawaiian volcano. Whereas Everest is 29,029 feet (8,848 meters) tall from its base to its peak, Mauna Kea is 33,500 feet (10,210 meters) in height.

Here's the catch: A large percentage of Mauna Kea lies below sea level. Meanwhile, Everest stands high and dry atop the world's biggest continent — so its snowy summit occupies a much higher altitude. Perspective matters.

No, we're not talking about the Johnny Cash song (an admitted banger).

In the Pacific basin, you can find the "Ring of Fire," a name the region earned because of the volcanic and earthquake activity. In this area, the Pacific Plate and many tectonic plates intersect.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, it is "the most seismically and volcanically active zone in the world."

The North Pacific right whale — so-called that because whalers considered them the "right" whale to hunt — is a rare species. They landed on the Endangered Species Act in 1970, and there may be fewer than 500 left.

In the Eastern Pacific, stretching from Mexico to Peru, is the Eastern Tropical Pacific, an incredibly biodiverse area.

The governments of Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama and other countries have teamed up for the Eastern Tropic Pacific Marine Corridor, which aims to protecting marine life and ecosystems.

Where the extinct desmostylians fit into the tree of life is still up for debate. Though they looked a bit like hippos, experts think they were more closely akin to elephants or horses.

For millions of years, the semi-aquatic herbivores ate kelp and seagrass in the northern Pacific; we have yet to find their remains anywhere else.

The 13 to 14 known desmostylian species made up a distinct order of mammals. After first appearing 33 million years ago, the beasts died out in the late Miocene Epoch, about 10 million years before the present. So far as we know, they were the only major marine mammal order to vanish entirely.

Down in the South Pacific Ocean, far below the equator, there's a place called Point Nemo, also known as the "Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility."

At this location, you're literally as far away from dry land as a person can get anywhere on the planet. You'd have to travel more than 1,450 nautical miles (2,685 kilometers) to reach the closest islands.

Point Nemo's remoteness makes it an attractive target for space agencies. We deliberately send rockets, satellites, freighters and space stations that are no longer useful into the ocean around this area, where they're not likely to bother any civilians.

Here, 260 spacecrafts or so now lie 2.4 miles (4 kilometers) beneath the water's surface. Some describe the area as a "spacecraft cemetery."

"I'm the king of the world!" Cameron's tragic period piece took home a record-setting 11 Oscars at the 1998 Academy Awards. It also nourished his fascination with shipwrecks and deep-sea exploration, which led to a visit to a deep ocean trench.

In 2012, Cameron set a different record by completing the first solo trip to the Challenger Deep. Situated 36,070 feet (10,944 meters) below sea level, this is the deepest part of the Pacific — or indeed, any ocean floor.

The Challenger Deep lies at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, a trough formed by the ongoing interaction of two tectonic plates.

Earth's rotation and the layout of its continents drive vast systems of circular ocean currents. Known as "gyres," they redistribute heat from the sun — along with nutrients that many life forms depend on.

Two of the world's five major gyres occur in the Pacific. Above the equator, there's the North Pacific Gyre that runs clockwise from California to Japan. Beneath this is the South Pacific Gyre, which moves in the opposite direction.

They have a shared knack for circulating man-made trash, resulting in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and giving us extra incentive to try and keep our oceans garbage-free.