773 



TABLE 888.— AREA, VOLUME, AND MEAN DEPTH OF OCEANS AND SEAS c ° 2 



Area 

 Body 10 9 km 2 



Atlantic Ocean"] 82.441 



Pacific Ocean > excluding adjacent seas 165.246 



Indian Ocean J 73.443 



All oceans (excluding adjacent seas) 321.130 



Arctic Mediterranean 14.090 



American Mediterranean 4.319 



Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea 2.966 



Asiatic Mediterranean 8.143 



Large Mediterranean seas 29.518 



Baltic Sea 422 



Hudson Bay 1.232 



Red Sea 438 



Persian Gulf 239 



Small Mediterranean seas 2.331 



All Mediterranean seas 31.849 



North Sea 575 



English Channel .075 



Irish Sea .103 



Gulf of St. Lawrence .238 



Andaman Sea .798 



Bering Sea 2.268 



Okhotsk Sea 1.528 



Japan Sea 1.008 



East China Sea 1.249 



Gulf of California .162 



Bass Strait 075 



Marginal seas 8.079 



All adjacent seas 39.928 



Atlantic Ocean"] 106.463 



Pacific Ocean ?• including adjacent seas 179.679 



Indian Ocean J 74.917 



All oceans (including adjacent seas) • 361.059 



Mean elevation of land = 840 m 

 Mean depth of oceans = 3,800 m 

 Mean sphere depth := 2,440 m 



Continental shelves extend out with small gradients to depths of about 100 to 150 m. 

 Average width about 30 miles but varies from zero to several hundred. Continental slopes 

 have about 2° to 3° inclination. Volcanic islands, fault scarps, etc., may have slopes as 

 steep as similar features on land. 



Greatest depths known are in the Pacific Ocean — 10,800 m 

 Deepest sounding in the Atlantic Ocean is 9,200 m 



Deepest sounding in the Indian Ocean is 7,450 m 



Greatest depths occur in troughs or trenches paralleling mountainous coasts and insular 

 arcs. These areas are centers of seismic and volcanic activity. 



Topography of the ocean floor is in general similar to major features found on land. 

 Submerged features such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge are comparable in size and extent 

 to the combined Rockies and Andes Mountains. In the Pacific are hundreds of isolated 

 guyots, flat-topped seamounts rising thousands of feet from the ocean bed with minimum 

 depths of 1,000-2,000 m. Many isolated seamounts rise more than 3,000 m from the sea 

 floor. Continental and insular shelves and slopes are not regular but generally show topo- 

 graphic relief such as shoals, terraces, canyons and valleys. Certain areas such as the 

 Mediterranean, Black Sea, Sea of Japan, Red Sea, etc., are isolated at depth by ridges 

 separating the deep water from the adjacent sea or ocean. 



302 Keprinted by permission of the publishers from The oceans; their physics, chemistry, and general 

 biology, by H. U. Sverdrup, Martin VV. Johnson, and Richard H. Fleming. Copyright 1942 by Prentice- 

 Hall, Inc. 



SMITHSONIAN PHYSICAL TABLES 



