The entire Western coast of the state of California is bordered by the largest and the deepest of the planets oceans, the Pacific Ocean. This ocean is massive. It extends from the

Arctic in the north to the Antarctic in the south, in Asia and Australia in the West, and North and South America in the East.

At a staggering 63,800,000 square miles or 165,250,000 square miles,

it is the largest division of the world ocean, making up

approximately 46% of the Earth's water surface and about one third of its total surface area.

One third of the entire surface of the Earth is the Pacific Ocean.

It is larger than all of the land on the planet combined.

The equator subdivides it into the North Pacific Ocean and the South Pacific Ocean.

Its average depth is 14,040 feet or 4,280 meters,

and the

80 meters, and the Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific is the deepest point in the world,

reaching a depth of 35,797, or 10,911 meters.

Though the people of Asia and Oceania

have traveled the Pacific Ocean since prehistoric times.

The Eastern Pacific was first cited by Europeans in the early 16th century when Spanish

Explorer Vasco Nunez de Baboa crossed the isthmus of Panama in 1513 and discovered

what he called the Great Southern Sea, which he named Marl del Sur.

The ocean's current name was coined by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan during this

Spanish circumnavigation of the world in 1521 as

he encountered favorable winds upon reaching the ocean.

He called it Mar Pacifico, which means peaceful sea both in Portuguese and Spanish.

The Pacific Ocean may have derived its name from being a peaceful body of water.

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