Oceans
The ocean is at the center of who we are. Even if you’ve never seen the ocean, you’re touched by it every single day. It produces half the air you and I breathe every day, the food we eat and the water we drink. You can’t help but be inspired by the ocean. From majestic whales to jaw-dropping waves, colorful coral reefs to graceful sea turtles, the ocean can capture your heart and soul like nothing else on earth.
1. Breathe deep, and thank the ocean.
Plants that live in the ocean produce about half of the oxygen in our atmosphere and absorb nearly one-third of human created carbon dioxide. Next time you inhale deeply, consider the diverse ocean flora that made it possible!
2. The ocean is a bonanza for biodiversity.
There are approximately one million unique species of ocean plants and animals known to science, and there may be as many as nine million more to discover. (Source) The United Nation Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization estimates much as 80 percent of life on Earth lives in the ocean.
3. Most of the ocean’s animals live in a blanket of perpetual darkness.
The average depth of the ocean is 14,000 feet. Light from the sun can illuminate the water up to 3280 feet deep, but there is rarely any sign of significant light beyond 656 feet. These conditions encouraged the evolution of unique biological characteristics, including a rainbow of bioluminescence and oddities like the barreleye fish, whose eyes point up instead of forward to see what is above its transparent head.
4. The ocean may hold compounds that can cure cancer and other ailments.
Each creature in the ocean has its own unique genetic fingerprint, which code for proteins and compounds, many of which are nonexistent in terrestrial life. Scientists are already successfully treating bacterial infections and HIV with compounds and chemicals derived from marine life, and treatments for diseases like cancer are also currently in testing.
5. There is still so much to discover.
Scientists know very little about what lives in the salty dark depths of the world’s ocean. Noted author John Steinbeck eloquently described it as “inner space” in a 1966 plea he published in Popular Science for the government to make to make a NASA equivalent for the sea. (You can read his complete letter here.)
