World Ocean Day takes place every year on June 8th to celebrate but also draw attention to the climate issues affecting our seas. 

The ocean is an amazing place, teeming with life and on World Ocean Day, we want to celebrate the incredible things about our ocean that you might not know. 

1. The majority of the earth (70%) is covered by water and is home to 94% of the world’s living things. It’s estimated that one million creatures live in the ocean, although we’ve only discovered about one-third of them. Around 2000 new species are discovered each year. The smallest living thing found so far is zooplankton, which can only be seen under a microscope. 
2. Around 70% of our oxygen comes from the ocean. This comes from tiny marine plants found in the sea, such as phytoplankton, kelp, and algal plankton. Prochlorococcus, a phytoplankton that is so small millions could fit in one drop of water, is estimated to produce the oxygen for one in every five breaths we take! 
3. Oceans have an average depth of 12,100 metres meaning that most of the ocean is dark - light waves can only travel through 330 feet of water. Because most of the earth is ocean, this means that a large proportion of the world is in constant darkness! 
4. The longest mountain range in the world is under the ocean. It’s called the Mid-Oceanic Ridge and is 40,390 miles long! It’s found on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean and most of this volcanic mountain range sits underwater. The best place to see the Ridge is Iceland. 
5. The world’s largest living structure is the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia. It covers an area of 133,000 square miles and can be seen from space. The Reef consists of 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands and was made a World Heritage Site in 1981. 
6. The Pacific Ocean is wider than the moon! It’s the world’s largest ocean at 59 million square miles. The most remote point is called Point Nemo and is named after the Captain from Jules Verne’s novel, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. It’s 1670 miles from land and is the most remote point from land in the whole world. The first ship to sail there was a Spanish research vessel in 1999. 
7. The Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean is the deepest point on the planet at 36,000 feet (7 miles!) below the surface of the ocean. The first person to successfully reach 35,000 feet was in 1960, followed in 2012 by filmmaker James Cameron who piloted a submarine of his own design. In 2019, a new record was set by Victor Vescovo. 
8. More people have been to the Moon than the bottom of the Mariana Trench because of the extreme conditions and immense pressure. Mars is currently more mapped than the ocean and less than 5% of the ocean has actually been explored, meaning that there is still so much we don’t know about our ocean and planet. Although thanks to developments in technology, we’re learning more every day.