Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is a body of salt water extending from the Antarctic region in the south to the Arctic in the north and lying between the continents of Asia and Australia on the west and North America and South America on the east.

The Pacific Ocean stretches from the Bering Strait near the Arctic Circle to the shores of Antarctica through 135° of latitude, some 9,600 miles (15,500 km). The mean depth of the Pacific (excluding adjacent seas) is 14,040 feet (4,280 metres), and its greatest known depth is 36,201 feet (11,034 metres).

The deep zone of the Pacific Ocean, which contains about 80 percent of the ocean’s volume, has relatively stable temperature and salinity patterns; its average temperature is 38.3 °F (3.5 °C).

The highest surface salinities in the Pacific Ocean occur in the southeastern area, where they reach 37 parts per thousand; the lowest salinities—less than about 32 parts—occur in the extreme northern zone of the Pacific. The salinity in the equatorial belt can be as low as 34 parts per thousand.

The Mariana Trench, also called the Marianas Trench, is a deep-sea trench in the floor of the western North Pacific Ocean, and it is the deepest such trench known on Earth. It is part of the western Pacific system of oceanic trenches coinciding with subduction zones—points where two adjacent tectonic plates collide, one being forced below the other.