One Big Ocean

Ocean Literacy Principle #1: The Earth has One Big Ocean with Many Features

“The ocean is the defining physical feature on our planet Earth—covering approximately 70% of the planet’s surface. There is one ocean with many ocean basins, such as the North Pacific, South Pacific, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, Indian, Southern and Arctic.

“Ocean basins are composed of the seafloor and all of its geological features (such as islands, trenches, mid-ocean ridges and rift valleys) and vary in size, shape and features due to the movement of Earth’s crust (lithosphere). Earth’s highest peaks, deepest valleys and flattest vast plains are all in the ocean.

“Throughout the ocean there is one interconnected circulation system powered by wind, tides, the force of the Earth’s rotation (Coriolis effect), the Sun, and water density differences. The shape of ocean basins and adjacent land masses influence the path of circulation. This ‘global ocean conveyor belt’ moves water throughout all of the ocean’s basins, transporting energy (heat), matter, and organisms around the ocean. Changes in ocean circulation have a large impact on the climate and cause changes in ecosystems.”

Here’s the ocean I see every day as I drive home. Google Maps calls it the Pacific Ocean. But Ocean Literacy Principle #1 tells me it is the Pacific Basin, actually the North Pacific Basin, a mere portion of the vast one world ocean.

So what? What’s in a name? Pacific Ocean or North Pacific Basin. Well, an ocean is just water, but a basin is the water’s container, the floor and walls holding that water. And the ocean is no smooth porcelain sink or tub, no household basin. No, it’s a rough varied terrain of trenches and ridges, high volcanic peaks and deep rift valleys. Having seen some ocean topographic maps I know that just beyond that farthest rock in my picture, Point Sur, is an underwater mountain, the Davidson Sea Mount, taller than California’s massive terrestrial Mt. Shasta. A mile and a half high, its summit is still almost a mile below the surface. Oceans may seem smooth and uniform even on a rough day, but under the surface, every possible terrain.

And just as my sink and tub are not isolated basins, so these wet world basins are one connected system. No man is an island. Every basin is “involved” (in John Donne’s words) with the whole. Everyone is “a piece of the continent, a part of the main,” says Donne. Did Donne chose the word “main” intentionally, to mean both the majority, the predominant power or force (derived from magna, strength, force), as well as “main” the sea? Perhaps. We now know that the one world ocean is one main, one bounding main, the main main.

This is not what I learned from my fifth grade geography textbook Maps Mean Adventure! We carefully drew and labeled world maps as if there were a sign at Tierra Del Fuego that read, “Leaving Atlantic Ocean (41,000,000 sq. miles,) Entering Pacific Ocean (64,000,000 sq. miles.)” No, they are all connected, all one.

And if it’s all connected, like the plumbing in my house, then the water is always turned on, always moving. Even if it looks calm on the surface, the ocean is never still. Using two more metaphors (besides mine of domestic plumbing) the authors of the Ocean Literacy Principles compare the one world ocean to our bodies, with a constant “circulation system” or to a massive industrial factory, with a constantly moving “conveyor belt.”

Interesting metaphors. I can imagine the scientists and educators trying to find an understandable image for how these different massive bodies of water are connected in motion and energy. We too have a hidden but essential unified system that carries our blood around our one body. Circulation. Cut your foot and the blood pours out from your whole body. Donate blood from your arm and your body creates new blood. Breathe deep and your capillaries start an ocean-like current of oxygen pulsing from deep to deep. Ever moving, ever renewing. But if you have blood cancer, it doesn’t just stay in one place. No leukemia is an island.

Or the conveyor belt metaphor. A little mechanistic for my taste, like saying our bodies are “hard–wired” for something. I am not a machine, nor is the ocean. But maybe this image is easier for people to picture and accept than our hidden blood circulation. Since much of our food production is so mechanized, we can easily relate to food moving on these worldwide deep sea “conveyor belts.” About the same time that I was reading Maps Mean Adventure!, I remember an inspirational film, maybe it was on 1950’s TV, about American industrial know-how pounding out products in bulk. It was about corn flakes, how the Kellogg’s company used conveyor belts to take corn cobs off the field, and then chop, heat, measure, distribute, package, seal, truck, display, and sell, the final product being happy children at breakfast, little cogs in a machine. Despite the troublesome metaphor, it does “convey” the sense of oceans “transporting energy, matter and organisms.”

Next week we will look at Ocean Literacy Principle #2 – how the ocean shapes the earth, facts and ideas about rocks, sand, shelves and waves. For now, if you live near the ocean, or can only imagine it, try to think “one, varied and moving” rather than “separate, uniform and still.” As our bodies are mostly wet, it’s all connected, and designed for living and moving.

Copyright © 2017 Deborah Streeter