The SILENT OCEAN, the largest body of water in the world, whose area is estimated at 178.62 million km2, which is several million square kilometres more than the Earth’s land and more than double the size of the Atlantic Ocean. The width of the Pacific Ocean from Panama to the eastern coast of Mindanao Island is 17,200 km, and the length from north to south, from the Bering Strait to Antarctica - 15,450 km. It extends from the western shores of North and South America to the eastern coasts of Asia and Australia. From the north, the Pacific Ocean is almost completely closed by land, connecting with the Arctic Ocean with a narrow Bering Strait (minimum width 86 km). In the south, it reaches the coast of Antarctica, and in the east, its border with the Atlantic Ocean is drawn at 67 ° W - Cape Horn meridian; in the west, the border of the South Pacific Ocean with the Indian Ocean is drawn at 147 ° East, corresponding to the position of Cape Southeast in southern Tasmania.
CURRENTS, TIDES, TSUNAMI.
The main currents in the northern part of the Pacific Ocean include the warm Kuroshio, or Japanese, flowing into the North Pacific (these currents play the same role in the Pacific Ocean as the system of the Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Current in the Atlantic Ocean); cold California current; Northern Passat (Equatorial) current and cold Kamchatka (Kuril) current. In the southern part of the ocean, the warm currents of the East Australian and Southern Passat (Equatorial) are distinguished; Cold currents of the West Winds and Peruvian. In the Northern Hemisphere, these main systems of currents move clockwise, and in the Southern Hemisphere - against it. The tides are generally low for the Pacific; the exception is Cook's Bay in Alaska, famous for its exceptionally large rise in water during high tides and second only to Fundy's Bay in the northwest Atlantic Ocean in this respect.
When earthquakes or large landslides occur on the seabed, tsunami waves occur. These waves cover huge distances, sometimes more than 16 thousand km. In the open ocean, they have a small height and a large extent, but when approaching land, especially in narrow and shallow bays, their height can increase up to 50 m.
RESEARCH HISTORY.
Sailing in the Pacific began long before the written history of mankind. However, there is evidence that the first European to see the Pacific Ocean was the Portuguese Vasco Balboa; in 1513 the ocean opened before him from the Darien mountains in Panama. Famous names such as Fernand Magellan, Abel Tasman, Francis Drake, Charles Darwin, Vitus Bering, James Cook and George Vancouver are found in the history of Pacific research. Later, scientific expeditions on the British ship Challenger (1872–1876), and then on the ships Tuscarora, Planet and Discovery, played a large role.
However, not all seafarers crossing the Pacific Ocean did this on purpose and not all were well equipped for such a voyage. It could well be that the winds and ocean currents picked up primitive vessels or rafts and carried them to distant shores. In 1946, the Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl put forward a theory according to which Polynesia was settled by immigrants from South America, who lived in the territory of Peru in pre-Yink period. In support of his theory, Heyerdahl with five satellites sailed almost 7 thousand km across the Pacific Ocean on a primitive raft of balsa logs. However, although his voyage, which lasted 101 days, proved the possibility of such a trip in the past, most oceanologists still do not accept Heyerdahl’s theory.
In 1961, a discovery was made indicating the possibility of even more striking contacts between the inhabitants of the opposite shores of the Pacific Ocean. In Ecuador, in a primitive burial site at Valdivia site, a fragment of ceramics was discovered that was strikingly similar in design and technology to the ceramics of the Japanese islands. Other ceramics were found that belonged to these two spatially disjointed cultures and also had a noticeable similarity. Judging by archaeological data, this transoceanic contact between cultures located at a distance of about 13 thousand km, occurred approx. 3000 years BC.