Nov
24
MYSTERIOUS WATERS
Below the surface of the Earth’s oceans lies a mysterious and relatively unknown world. With an enormous diversity of life, the ocean remains one of the world’s largest ecosystems, though we still known very little about what lives in its great depths. Go beneath the water and learn more surprises of the sea:
- Water covers more than three quarters of the globe.
- We know the surface of Mars or Venus better than Earth’s ocean floor.
- Only about 5% of the global ocean floor has been mapped in detail.
- Average ocean depths are approximately 2.2 miles, nearly 12,000 feet, deep.
- The mid ocean ridges of the world are so long they could go right around the Earth one and a half times.
- Overall, the diversity of the deep sea rivals that of rain forests on land.
- There are up to 100,000 underwater mud volcanoes on continental slopes and abyssal plains – formed by gas escaping from some underground source under high pressure.
- There are between 70,000 and 100,000 sea mounts more than half a mile tall in the world’s ocean and as many as one million features over 328 feet tall.
- The Mid Oceanic Ridge is the world’s longest mountain chain being more than 35,000 miles, running along the center of the ocean basins and joining up around the globe like the seams on a basketball.
- Iceland is one of the few places where you can stand on the Mid Atlantic ridge on dry land
See more photos and video at National Geographic
