Reference
- Pacific OceanThe Pacific Ocean is the largest, and oldest, of the earth’s five oceans, and also the widest and deepest. It is twice the size of the Atlantic Ocean and 15 times that of the USA, covering an area of 169.8 million km2, approximately one-third of the planet. It is the remnants of the ancient Panthalassa Ocean that formed 200 million years ago and has decreased in size since it was first formed. It is still decreasing today as the Atlantic and Indian Oceans open. It contains more than twice the volume of water contained in either the Indian or Atlantic Oceans, greater than 723 million km3. It is 18,000 km at its widest point and reaches depths greater than 11 km in some parts such as the Mariana Trench, which is the deepest point on Earth.
The Pacific Ocean houses the earth’s highest mountain chain from base to peak, which is Mauna Kea on Hawaii. Rising 9.2 km from the Pacific Ocean floor, it is part of the East Pacific Rise, which is one of the most active mid-ocean ridges in the world. It generates new ocean crust at the rate of 15 cm annually.
This ocean is extremely active tectonically, especially in the ‘ring of fire’. The Pacific ‘ring of fire’ is the area from New Zealand to southern Chile, where there are violent earthquakes and intense volcanic activities because of the subduction of the Pacific Ocean crust under the continental crust. It is an area of rugged surfaces and deep trenches, such as the Tonga Trench, which reaches depths greater than 10.5 km.
It has a coastline of approximately 135,663 km and houses many island chains, most of which run in a north-west-south-east direction. The islands total over 25,000, more than the world’s other oceans islands combined. They are all volcanic in origin and they are a major tourist attraction in this region, with the 20 islands that make up Oceania accommodating most of the tourism, approximately 10 million visitors annually. The majority of the smaller islands lie between the latitudes 30°S and 30°N. Many of them are atoll islands, which are islands formed by piles of sand on living coral. The largest of these islands is Kiritimati, which is also the breeding ground of six million birds. Many of these islands have unique and endemic fauna and flora, and are relatively undisturbed, because they are relatively isolated from human activity. The most famous of these islands are the Galapagos Islands in the South Pacific, which was the inspiration for Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution and survival of the fittest.
The Pacific Ocean has global economic importance. It houses 17 independent nations such as the Philippines, Japan, New Zealand and Australia. It serves as a means of inexpensive transportation between the East and West, especially in the export industries. It is rich in industrial resources such as manganese nodules, oil, gas, fish, sand and gravel. It is especially important to the construction, petroleum and fishing industries. Over 54% of the world’s fish that is caught comes from this ocean, and this figure has continued to grow.
The Pacific Ocean is also noted for the wide array of recreational activities such as sailing, scuba-diving, surfing and cruise tourism. It is most known for surfing because of the large waves that are generated within its boundaries. It is also a popular destination for diving enthusiasts because it contains many coral reefs, which house a diversity of aquatic animals.
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Perspectives
TephroArchaeology in the North Pacific
'TephroArchaeology' is a translation of the Japanese word kazanbai kōkogaku (lit. volcanic ash archaeology), referring to a sub-discipline of archaeology that has developed in Japan in the last few decades. The first book compilation using the term, edited by the doyen of tephroarchaeology, geologist ARAI Fusao, appeared in 1993; chapters were written by 5 geologists, 3 archaeologists, 3 geographers, an engineer, and a historian. From its beginning, this subdiscipline has been interdisciplinary in approach and applied to all time periods throughout the Japanese Islands. Honouring this tradition, a panel on TephroArchaeology was organized by Barnes & Soda at the World Archaeology Congress 8 meetings in Kyoto (August-September 2016). The scope of concern was broadened to include other parts of the world and further disciplines. Several of the papers presented at WAC8 are included here together with other invited papers that complete the North Pacific focus. Most of the chapters are case-studies written by their excavators in Japan, Canada, and the United States, but a historian and a behavioural psychologist contribute important perspectives and add world-wide content. The volume is rounded out by an extensive Preface, Introduction and Appendices by co-editor Barnes, and a historic contextualization of TephroArchaeology by co-editor Soda. A final appendix consists of a translation of the techniques of tephra identification by MACHIDA Hiroshi & ARAI Fusao, to whom the volume is dedicated. The strengths of this book are many. It was primarily designed to bring into the English-speaking world the work being done by local archaeologists in Japan whose results are usually only accessible in Japanese. In addition to the meticulous excavation methodologies, innovative analytical techniques and interpretive analyses represented herein by all the authors are the variety of problems in human history that can be addressed through tephroarchaeological investigation. This subdiscipline may spawn a more general Volcanic Archaeology or Archaeological Volcanology as adherents grow and as volcanologists themselves take heed of the archaeological record to inform on eruption processes and products.
Japanese Advance into the Pacific Ocean
This book asserts that the albatross was the reason for the advance of the Japanese into the isolated islands in the Pacific after the abolition of the Japanese "closed-door" policy that had been in effect from the seventeenth century to the latter part of the nineteenth century. The birds' plumage was of high quality and sold at quite a good price in Europe. The Japanese realized the advantage of this global trade, and their desire to capture albatross motivated them to advance into the Pacific. The exploration of the uninhabited islands had become a fast-moving trend, defined by the author as the "Bird Rush". As a consequence, the advance into the Pacific by the Japanese resulted in the expansion of Japanese territory. The author has interpreted this Japanese movement into the Pacific by making use of the framework of three distinct shifts: in the aim of their actions from birds to guano / phosphate ore, in the agents of action from individual speculators to commercial capital and then to monopolistic capital, and from the sea near Japan to the wider Pacific. This concept can be termed "a view of history centered on the albatross".
The Ocean Basins and Margins
1. Bering Sea-Aleutian Arc, Alaska.- 2. The Northeast Pacific Ocean and Margin.- 3. The Interplay of Accretionary and Attritionary Tectonics along the California Margin.- 4. The Stratigraphy and Tectonics of China.- 5. The Geology of the China Sea.- 6. Complexities in the Development of the Caroline Plate Region, Western Equatorial Pacific.- 7. The Norfolk Ridge System and Its Margins.- 8. Regional Geology of New Caledonia.- 9. The Tonga and Kermadec Ridges.- 10. The Geological Evolution of New Zealand and the New Zealand Region.- 11. Geophysics of the Pacific Basin Chapter.
Vanished Islands and Hidden Continents of the Pacific
Islands--as well as entire continents--are reputed to have disappeared in many parts of the world. Yet there is little information on this subject concerning its largest ocean, the Pacific. Over the years, geologists have amassed data that point to the undeniable fact of islands having disappeared in the Pacific, a phenomenon that the oral traditions of many groups of Pacific Islanders also highlight. There are even a few instances where fragments of Pacific continents have disappeared, becoming hidden from view rather than being submerged. In this scientifically rigorous yet readily comprehensible account of the fascinating subject of vanished islands and hidden continents in the Pacific, the author ranges far and wide, from explanations of the region's ancient history to the meanings of island myths. Using both original and up-to-date information, he shows that there is real value in bringing together myths and the geological understanding of land movements. A description of the Pacific Basin and the "ups and downs" of the land within its vast ocean is followed by chapters explaining how--long before humans arrived in this part of the world--islands and continents that no longer exist were once present. A succinct account is given of human settlement of the region and the establishment of cultural contexts for the observation of occasional catastrophic earth-surface changes and their encryption in folklore. The author also addresses the persistent myths of a "sunken continent" in the Pacific, which became widespread after European arrival and were subsequently incorporated into new age and pseudoscience explanations of our planet and its inhabitants. Finally, he presents original data and research on island disappearances witnessed by humans, recorded in oral and written traditions, and judged by geoscience to be authentic. Examples are drawn from throughout the Pacific, showing that not only have islands collapsed, and even vanished, within the past few hundred years, but that they are also liable to do so in the future.
Pacific Voyagers
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Hear descriptions of natural geographical features common throughout Pacific island chains. Oceanic people invented deep sea navigation long before the Vikings, settling thousands of islands.
Violent
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowSurrounded by the Ring of Fire, the Pacific Ocean is the epicenter of natural mayhem. Violence is part of life in the Pacific and creatures that live here must choose whether to avoid conflict...or rise to meet it.
Pacific Ocean
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowAncient mariners set sail thousands of years ago from Asia, landing on Hawaii, New Zealand and Easter Island. This puzzle of west to east migration--against prevailing winds--was solved by the discovery of El Niño cycles.
Online Resources
- Investigating the Role of Ocean–Atmosphere Coupling in the North Pacific OceanAir–sea interaction over the North Pacific is diagnosed using a simple, local coupled autoregressive model constructed from observed 7-day running-mean sea surface temperature (SST) and 2-m air temperature anomalies during the extended winter from the 1° × 1° objectively analyzed air–sea fluxes (OAFlux) dataset. Though the model is constructed from 1-week lag statistics, it successfully reproduces the observed anomaly evolution through lead times of 90 days, allowing an estimation of the relative roles of coupling and internal atmospheric and oceanic forcing upon North Pacific SSTs. It is found that east of the date line, SST variability is maintained by, but has little effect on, variability. However, in the Kuroshio–Oyashio confluence and extension region, about half of the SST variability is independent of , driven instead by SST noise forcing internal to the ocean. Including surface zonal winds in the analysis does not alter this conclusion, suggesting adequately represents the atmosphere. Repeating the analysis with the output of two control simulations from a fully coupled global climate model (GCM) differing only in their ocean resolution yields qualitatively similar results. However, for the simulation employing the coarse-resolution (1°) ocean model, all SST variability depends upon , apparently caused by a near absence of ocean-induced noise forcing. Collectively, these results imply that a strong contribution from internal oceanic forcing drives SST variability in the Kuroshio–Oyashio region, which may be used as a justification for atmospheric GCM experiments forced with SST anomalies in that region alone. This conclusion is unaffected by increasing the dimensionality of the model to allow for intrabasin interaction.
- The Pacific Ocean virome (POV): a marine viral metagenomic dataset and associated protein clusters for quantitative viral ecologyBacteria and their viruses (phage) are fundamental drivers of many ecosystem processes including global biogeochemistry and horizontal gene transfer. While databases and resources for studying function in uncultured bacterial communities are relatively advanced, many fewer exist for their viral counterparts. The issue is largely technical in that the majority (often 90%) of viral sequences are functionally 'unknown' making viruses a virtually untapped resource of functional and physiological information. Here, we provide a community resource that organizes this unknown sequence space into 27 K high confidence protein clusters using 32 viral metagenomes from four biogeographic regions in the Pacific Ocean that vary by season, depth, and proximity to land, and include some of the first deep pelagic ocean viral metagenomes. These protein clusters more than double currently available viral protein clusters, including those from environmental datasets. Further, a protein cluster guided analysis of functional diversity revealed that richness decreased (i) from deep to surface waters, (ii) from winter to summer, (iii) and with distance from shore in surface waters only. These data provide a framework from which to draw on for future metadata-enabled functional inquiries of the vast viral unknown.
Voracious
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowThere is plenty of food in the Pacific Ocean, but it is the challenge of finding that food that drives all life in the Pacific. In the voracious Pacific we meet a destructive army of mouths, a killer with a hundred mouths and the biggest mouth in the ocean