The 21st Century's New World: The Pacific Ocean

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Here is a place where life collides into the unknown 

Let's be honest, you only had like two oceans to guess from in the last post. It was not that hard to guess where the subject was going. 

After an admittedly few but efficient five minutes on learning about this blog's next stop, I've decided that one of the most fascinating and defining traits of the Pacific Ocean is its sheer size. As our largest and deepest ocean, the Pacific Ocean's 63,800,000 sq miles of surface blue lays over an average depth of 13,000 feet. That's about 12 Eiffel Towers speared under the surface pointing to some lightless, yet not lifeless, land we know very little about. 

What does this all mean? Well, one is that I'm too lazy to find the calculated volume of the Pacific Ocean using the stats*1 above. Two is far more thought-provoking. The mystery volume I didn't calculate from above is insanely large. Considering that only around 5% of the oceans have been explored and that only one person had reached a depth of 35,000 feet, the supposed deepest point in Mariana Trench*2*3, well, there's so much to discover down there, and I just think that's so exciting. 

That felt anticlimactic. But when I think back to my apush class, the second thing I think of besides urgh is how the some of the most important events in history were of discovery. 1492: Columbus explores the Americas. 1607: Establishment of Jamestown. 1804: Lewis and Clark Exploration, etc. Each a monumental moment, ushering in a new era. 

And the Pacific Ocean dwarfs them all in size. There's a New World waiting for us down there, and even though we've already established some of its features, like the Ring of Fire and Challenger Deep, the overall anatomy is still unknown. I mean, 63,800,000 sq miles * 13,000 ft is a lot of volume to explore. 

We're going to start at 18° 9' 22.6440'' S, 147° 29' 9.4632'' E, a place where 1500 species of fish and 2800 species of plants thrive, where creatures called Potato Cod and Spaghetti Worm exist, where fantasy paradoxically materializes into this world. The Great Barrier Reef is a place where one feels free in loving the unknown in a world that knows so much.  


footnotes

*1 - and i plan on being a stats major...my tbd double-major gotta pull through here

*2 - we have no idea how far down it goes...hollow earth?!?!?

*3 - ^ def a joke pls no conspiracy theories again






https://www.orpheus.com.au/news/why-everyone-needs-to-see-the-great-barrier-reef/

https://www.latlong.net/place/the-great-barrier-reef-australia-3899.html#:~:text=The%20Great%20Barrier%20Reef%2C%20Australia%20Lat%20Long%20Coordinates,29%27%209.4632%27%27%20E%20%205%20more%20rows%20

https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/oceans/pacific-ocean/

https://matadornetwork.com/sports/11-bizarre-species-to-look-for-on-a-great-barrier-reef-dive-pics/#:~:text=11%20Bizarre%20Species%20To%20Look%20for%20on%20a,8%20Giant%20clam%20%28%20Tridacna%20gigas%29%20More%20items

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