Page 4 - My FlipBook

The Deep Blue Sea

Nearly three-quarters of the world is covered by five
great oceans: the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern, and
Arctic. They are so deep and dark that we know only a little about them.
But scientists who study oceans (oceanographers) are discovering more and more.

Making waves

Ocean waves begin far out in the
ocean, as winds blow the surface into
ripples. The ripples pile up into waves called
swell. The water in waves barely moves, just
rolling around as waves swell up and passing on
their energy to the next wave. But as they near
the coast, waves pile up and spill over to “break”
onto the shore in an avalanche of foam.

Coastal zone Pelagic zone (open ocean)

Top
(euphotic )
layer

Continental shelf

Middle
The depths (bathyal) layer

of the ocean

Around each ocean is a narrow rim
where the sea is shallow, called the
continental shelf. Beyond it, the sea floor
plunges thousands of feet to the vast
slime-covered abyssal plain. If you dove
down into the ocean, you’d find it getting Deep
darker and darker, and the creatures (abyssal) layer
getting stranger and stranger.

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