How Deep Is the Ocean?

The global ocean covers some 70 percent of our planet, and its depths are still unexplored. Learn about its deepest trenches in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/oceanography/how-deep-is-ocean.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey,
brain Stuff, Lauren Volga bomb here. To know the ocean
is to know some mind boggling numbers. About of Earth's
surface is covered by water. All that liquid takes up
a lot of space, more than three D thirty two million,

(00:24):
five hundred nineteen thousand cubic miles. That's about one billion,
three D eight six million cubic kilometers. The official website
of the U s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says
that there's enough water in the oceans to fill over
three hundred and fifty two quintillion gallon sized milk containers. Now,

(00:46):
let's go out on a limb and assume that you
don't have that many spare milk jugs just lying around.
Here's another visual. In theory, you could use the ocean
to cover the entirety of the United States, including Alaska
and Hawaii, in a column of water measuring over eighty
two miles tall or about a hundred thirty two kilometers.

(01:07):
Pardners for using a four letter word, But dang, it's
no surprise that some of the most frequently asked questions
about our ocean involve its depths, how deep is the ocean,
where's the very deepest part of it, and what's the
ocean's average depth. You'll learn the answers in this episode,
and you won't even need to pack your scuba gear.

(01:30):
Strictly speaking, Earth only has one ocean. They're all connected,
after all, but the five major regions within this giant
body of water are all called oceans in their own right.
There's the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean,
the Arctic Ocean, and the Southern Ocean. Together they make
up what's known as the global ocean. That's what people

(01:52):
usually mean when they start talking about the ocean as
a whole. It's also what we were referring to in
both of the hypothetical visualizations described Abbed earlier. Of course,
the depth of the ocean isn't uniform. It varies a
great deal based on geography. At any random spot on
the map, the distance between the ocean floor and the
water surface of above may be influenced by canyons, undersea,

(02:15):
mountain ranges, or a host of other features. Using tools
such as sonar, radar, and satellite technology, the scientists have
calculated that the global ocean has an average or mean
depth of approximately twelve thousand, seven hundred and eighty five ft.
That's three thousand, eight hundred and ninety seven. That works

(02:37):
out to around two point four miles or three point
nine kilometers. But we can also compare the five separate
oceans different depths. Twenty nineteen study published in the journal
Earth Science Reviews did just that, and they found that
the deepest point in the Arctic Ocean is in a
trench called the Malloy Hole. It's located some eighteen thousand,

(02:59):
six hund feet or five thousand, six hundred seventy below
the surface. The deepest part of the Indian Ocean is
probably an unnamed part of the Java Trench, situated twenty
three thousand, nine hundred feet or seven thousand, two hundred
nine under water. As for the Southern Ocean, which encircles Antarctica,

(03:19):
its deepest locality can be found within the South Sandwich Trench,
at a depth of twenty four thousand, two hundred feet
or seven thousand, three hundred and eighty meters. The deepest
part of the Atlantic Ocean seems to be a Puerto
Rico trench site known as the Milwaukee Deep. It has
a depth of seven thousand, six hundred feet or eight thousand,

(03:40):
four hundred meters. And what about the Pacific Ocean. We've
saved the best for last. In the western part of
the Pacific, there's an archipelago called the Mariana Islands. Just
to the east of that, there's a yawning underwater chasm
that adventurers and science fiction writers can't get enough of.
It's name is the Mariana Trench, and it contains the

(04:02):
very deepest place in not only the Pacific, but in
the entire global ocean as well, a site that's called
Challenger Deep. Measuring its exact depth has proven tricky, but
by a rather conservative estimate, which the twenty nineteen study endorses,
the sea floor here may rest at an incredible thirty

(04:22):
five thousand, eight hundred and forty feet. That's ten thousand
below the water's surface. That means that Challenger Deep is
even deeper than Mount Everest is tall. The peak of
that Himalayan landmark is only around twenty nine thousand feet
above sea level, or eight thousand, eight hundreds But both

(04:43):
Earth's tallest mountains and such extreme trenches are formed by
the same actions. The movements and interactions of Earth's tectonic plates.
Today's episode is based on the article how Deep is
the Ocean on how stuff works dot Com written by
Mark Mancini. A brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio

(05:05):
and partnership with how stuff works dot com, and it's
produced by Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.