Okay, so geography quiz: how many oceans does the world have?
Well, we’ve got:
- Atlantic Ocean
- Indian Ocean
- Pacific Ocean
- Arctic Ocean
…and, well someone recently told me with confidence that the world does in fact have five oceans, but he didn’t know the fifth one either. I could have looked the answer up on my cell phone in seconds, but I decided to have some fun with it, so I just asked friends and random people what the fifth ocean was.
Well, two months later, I gave in. One wikipedia search later, and I find the elusive yet glorious answer is…
The Southern Ocean?
Huh? Maybe I’m just an ignant American, but I honestly had never heard of the Southern Ocean. Apparently, that picture at right with the concentric circles is what it looks like, and Wikipedia claims that the, ahem, International Hydrographic Organization (who knew) decided just in 2000 that there are in fact five oceans in the world (not four) and declared the fifth one the mighty “Southern Ocean.”
I suppose I could research this further, but I don’t get it. They’re all fluid bodies of water flowing one right into each other. How could they just decide after hundreds of years of knowing what the globe looked like that there should be a fifth ocean?
Weird stuff.
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