The 8th of June is World Oceans Day.
Thought to celebrate this day I’d share some cool facts.
Did you know that around 70% of the world’s surface is covered by oceans?
There are 5 different oceans – namely the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean , the Arctic Ocean and the Southern Ocean.
The largest is the Pacific ocean and it covers around 30% of the Earth. The name “Pacific” come from the Latin word ‘pacificus’ – meaning peaceful.
Incredibly, around 70% of the oxygen that we breathe is produced by the oceans.
Only 5% of the oceans have been explored. Not surprising really when the deepest known area of the Earth’s oceans is in the Pacific, near Guam in the Philippine Sea at the end of the Mariana Trench, and its deepest point measures nearly 11km.
The Great Barrier Reef (the largest coral reef near Australia) measures about 2,600km and it can be seen from the moon!
We all know that oil spills in the sea are terrible and kill lots of sea life, but waste matter from sewerage and agriculture gets dumped into the sea too. This sometimes had all sorts of toxins in it that can cause dangerous types of algae (sea plants) to bloom in water near the coast. When these blooms die and rot they use up all the oxygen in the water and then there’s none left for the fish. These are called “creeping dead zones”
Some people just think of the sea as a huge dumping ground. Lots of other stuff (like chemicals) are chucked into the sea – and get eaten by the fish that you and I eat, which causes illness in humans (never mind what it does to the sea life). It’s very scary how polluted the seas have become.
312 million kilograms of sea food is consumed each year! Our ocean resources are being depleted daily. People often imagine that the sea is full of a never-ending supply of fish but this is simply not so.
Please remember you can consult the SASSI website and find out which fish are endangered or not.
To celebrate World Ocean Day we are going to make Sibo and the Sea available on the website for you to freely read if you want to read more about the oceans.
Please only eat from the “green list” people!
Sibo