08 Jan
A continuous body of water encircling Earth, the World Ocean is divided into a number of principal areas with relatively uninhibited interchange among them. Five oceanic divisions are usually defined: Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic, and Southern; the last two listed are sometimes consolidated into the first three.
The World Ocean or Global Ocean (colloquially the sea or the ocean) is the interconnected system of Earth's oceanic waters, and comprises the bulk of the hydrosphere, covering 361,132,000 sq. km or 139,434,000 square miles (70.8%) of Earth's surface, with a total volume of roughly 1,332,000,000 cubic kilometres (320,000,000 cubic miles).
Organization
The unity and continuity of the World Ocean, with relatively free interchange among its parts, is of fundamental importance to oceanography. It is divided into a number of principal oceanic areas that are delimited by the continents and various oceanographic features: these divisions are the Atlantic Ocean, Arctic Ocean (sometimes considered an estuary of the Atlantic), Indian Ocean, Pacific Ocean, and Southern Ocean, defined by the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) in 2000, based on evidence that this region of the World Ocean has a distinct ecosystem and a unique impact on global climate. In turn, oceanic waters are interspersed by many smaller seas, gulfs, and bays.
• The Indian Ocean, the third largest, extends northward from the Southern Ocean to India, the Arabian Peninsula, and Southeast Asia in Asia, and between Africa in the west and Australia in the east. The Indian Ocean joins the Pacific Ocean to the east, near Australia.
• The Pacific Ocean, the largest of the oceans, also reaches northward from the Southern Ocean to the Arctic Ocean. It spans the gap between Australia and Asia, and the Americas. The Pacific Ocean meets the Atlantic Ocean south of South America at Cape Horn.
• The Atlantic Ocean, the second largest, extends from the Southern Ocean between the Americas, and Africa and Europe, to the Arctic Ocean. The Atlantic Ocean meets the Indian Ocean south of Africa atCape Agulhas.
• The Arctic Ocean is the smallest of the five. It joins the Atlantic Ocean near Greenland and Iceland and joins the Pacific Ocean at the Bering Strait. It overlies the North Pole, touching North America in the Western Hemisphere and Scandinavia and Siberia in the Eastern Hemisphere. The Arctic Ocean is partially covered in sea ice, the extent of which varies according to the season.
• The Southern Ocean is a proposed ocean surrounding Antarctica, dominated by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, generally the ocean south of 60 degrees south latitude. The Southern Ocean is partially covered in sea ice, the extent of which varies according to the season. The Southern Ocean is the second smallest of the five named oceans.
First of all, I would like to introduce the Indian Ocean which occupied 2100 km coastline of western and southern Myanmar, so as to familiar young generations with significant characteristics of it. I intend to present concise account of all five oceans of the world one by one in the year 2021.
Indian Ocean
Indian Ocean, body of salt water covering approximately one-fifth of the total ocean area of the world. It is the smallest, geologically youngest, and physically most complex of the world’s three major oceans. It stretches for more than 6,200 miles (10,000 km) between the southern tips of Africa and Australia and, without its marginal seas, has an area of about 28,360,000 square miles (73,440,000 sq. km). The Indian Ocean’s average depth is 12,990 feet (3,960 metres), and its deepest point, in the Sunda Deep of the Java Trench off the southern coast of the island of Java , is 24,442 feet (7,450 metres).
Physiography And Geology
The origin and evolution of the Indian Ocean is the most complicated of the three major oceans. Its formation is a consequence of the breakup, which began about 180 million years ago, of the southern supercontinent Gondwanaland; by the movement to the northeast of the Indian subcontinent (beginning about 125 million years ago), which began colliding with Eurasia about 50 million years ago; and by the western movement of Africa and separation of Australia from Antarctica some 53 million years ago. By 36 million years ago, the Indian Ocean had taken on its present configuration. Although it first opened some 140 million years ago, almost all the Indian Ocean basin is less than 80 million years old.
Submarine features Oceanic ridges
The oceanic ridges consist of a rugged, seismically active mountain chain that is part of the worldwide oceanic ridge system and still contains centres of seafloor spreading in several places. The ridges form an inverted Y on the ocean floor, starting in the upper northwest with the Carlsberg Ridge in the Arabian Sea, turning due south past the Chagos-Laccadive Plateau, and becoming the Mid-Indian (or Central Indian) Ridge. Southeast of Madagascar the ridge branches: the Southwest Indian Ridge continues to the southwest until it merges into the Atlantic-Indian Ridge south of Africa, and the Southeast Indian Ridge trends to the east until it joins the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge south of Tasmania. Most striking is the aseismic (virtually earthquake-free) Ninetyeast Ridge, which is the longest and straightest in the world ocean. First discovered in 1962, it runs northward along the 90° E meridian (hence its name) for 2,800 miles (4,500 km) from the zonal Broken Ridge at latitudes 31° S to 9° N and can be traced farther under the sediments of the Bay of Bengal. Other important meridional aseismic ridges include the Chagos-Laccadive, Madagascar, and Mozambique plateaus, which are not part of the global oceanic ridge system.
Seamounts
Seamounts are extinct submarine volcanoes that are conically shaped and often flat-topped. They rise abruptly from the abyssal plain to heights at least 3,300 feet (1,000 metres) above the ocean floor. In the Indian Ocean, seamounts are particularly abundant between Réunion and Seychelles in the Central Indian Basin and the Vening Meinesz group near Wharton Basin. Bardin, Kohler, Nikitin, and Williams seamounts are examples.
Ocean basins
Ocean basins are characterized by smooth, flat plains of thick sediment with abyssal hills (i.e., features that are less than 3,300 feet high) at the bottom flanks of the oceanic ridges. The Indian Ocean’s complex ridge topography led to the formation of many basins that range in width from 200 to 5,600 miles (320 to 9,000 km). From roughly north to south they include the Arabian, Somali, Mascarene, Madagascar, Mozambique, Agulhas, and Crozet basins in the west and the Central Indian (the largest), Wharton, and South Australia basins in the east.
Continental rise, slope, and shelf
The continental shelf extends to an average width of about 75 miles (120 km) in the Indian Ocean, with its widest points 190 miles (300 km) off Mumbai (Bombay) on the western coast of India and off northwestern Australia. The island shelves are only about 1,000 feet (300 metres) wide. The shelf break is at a depth of about 460 feet (140 metres). Submarine canyons indent the steep slope below the break. The Ganges (Ganga) and Indus rivers of Asia and the Zambezi River of Africa have all carved particularly large canyons. Their sediment loads extend far beyond the shelf, form the rises at the foot of the slope, and contribute to the abyssal plains of their respective basins. The Ganges sediment cone is the world’s widest and thickest.
Trenches
The Indian Ocean has the fewest trenches of any of the world’s oceans. The narrow 50 miles (80 km), volcanic, and seismically active Java Trench is the world’s second longest, stretching more than 2,800 miles (4,500 km) from southwest of Java and continuing northward as the Sunda Trench past Sumatra, with an extension along the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The portion of that system adjacent to Sumatra was the centre of a massive undersea earthquake in 2004 (magnitude 9.1) that affected some 600 miles (1,000 km) of the associated fault zone. A series of devastating tsunamis generated by the quake swamped coastal towns, particularly in Indonesia, and reached to the northern end of the Bay of Bengal and as far as the Indian Ocean’s western shores.
Bottom deposits
The immense load of suspended sediments from the rivers emptying into the Indian Ocean is the highest of the three oceans, and nearly half of it comes from the Indian subcontinent alone. Those terrigenous sediments occur mostly on the continental shelves, slopes, and rises, and they merge into abyssal plains. Cones of thicknesses of at least 1 mile (1.6 km) are found in the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, and the Somali and Mozambique basins. Wharton Basin off northern Australia has the oldest sediments. In the Ganges-Brahmaputra cone, sediments exceed 7 miles (11 km) in thickness and extend to latitude 10° S. Little sediment has accumulated along the southern Sunda Islands, probably because the Java Trench acts as a sediment trap; instead, silicic volcanic ash is found there. Brown and red clay sediments dominate in the deep sea between 10° N and 40° S away from islands and continents and are 1,000 feet (300 metres) thick. In the equatorial zone, an area of high oceanic productivity, calcareous and siliceous oozes are abundant. South of and beneath the Antarctic Convergence (roughly 50° S), another highly productive area, are diatomaceous algal oozes. Sediments are absent over a width of about 45 miles (70 km) on the oceanic ridge crests, and the flanks are only sparsely covered. The ocean floor is composed of basalt in various stages of alteration. The principal authigenic (ocean-formed) mineral deposits are phosphorites at depths of 130 to 1,300 feet (40 to 400 metres), ferromanganese crusts at depths of 3,300 to 8,200 feet (1,000 to 2,500 metres), ferromanganese nodules at depths greater than 10,000 feet (3,000 metres), and hydrothermal metalliferous sediments at the crests of the Carlsberg and Central Indian ridges.
Sources: 1. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 2. Viktor Filipovich Kanayev
By Than Htun (Myanmar Geosciences Society)
