World Atlas of the Oceans

Summary

Just as humans scale the highest mountains, they also explore the deepest depths of the world's oceans. In this lavish atlas, a variety of maps depict the fascinating geographical landmarks of the ocean floor: volcanoes that rise suddenly from the deep ocean; seamounts and ridges that contain rich mineral deposits; shipwrecks (the Titanic is only one example among many); and marine life in the hidden depths of the ocean that until now has been invisible to humans.Deep-sea exploration is one of the great achievements of the twentieth century. Expeditions to the bottom of the sea, for example Picard's groundbreaking explorations in a submersible, made sensational news. Still, these excursions to the deepest places on earth were isolated events. It wasn't until after the Second World War that a comprehensive picture of the ocean floor began to emerge. World Atlas of the Oceans brings these images together in a new and truly unique look at the oceans. The General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (or GEBCO), contained in this atlas, has never been published. And, relief maps and satellite images of the oceans provide detailed pictures of the hidden recesses of the world's oceans.World Atlas of the Oceans is the only cartographic work of its kind to document the ocean floor with its mountains, volcanoes, fracture zones, and outline of tectonic plates in such amazing detail.

Preface
How the Oceans were Formed
The Oceans
The sea floor in relief
Open borders in the north
Rises in the South Atlantic
The Big Blue
The youngest ocean
The seas around the North Pole
The south's icy oceanHistorical Maps of the World
The Ptloemaneus map of the world
The oceans according to a 16th-century mapThe Oceans as a Habitat and a Commercial Area
Home to remarkable creatures
Predatory fish in the deep seas
Sea lions, fish, and crustaceans
migratory movements of the whales
Ocean currents
The layers of the oceans
The driving force of the Sun
When air and sea clash
What causes tides
Life between land and sea
The long travels of an iceberg
Earth plates and volcanic chains
Sea freight
Straits
the eye of the needle
The lifelines of sea trade
The North Sea
Europe's turntable
A little sea with a great future
Transit traffic on the Mediterranean
The Atlantic
bridge to the New World
New terminal centers in the Pacific
Sunken ships and treasure
For whom the bell tolls
Food from the sea
International fishing
Giant pumps on the high seas
Crude oil
the gold of the seas
Atlantic and Alaskan oil deposits
Mineral resources under the sea
The Arctic Ocean and its perpetual ice
Antarctica: the white continent
A Garden of Eden in the sea
Sun, sea, and white beaches
Endangered marine life
How the oceans are polluted
Surveying the seasBathymetric Charts
The individual oceans and their basinsThe Atlantic Ocean
The Northwest Passage
The peak of the Atlantic
The ocean's lungs
On the icy inland sea
The Grand Banks' currents
The warm north of the Atlantic
The source of the Gulf Stream
Oases in watery wastes
America approaches Africa
Sahara sands in the deep seas
A passage for Antarctic waters
The edges of Africa
Icebergs off South America
The "sulfur pearls" of Namibia
The south polar hydrologic cycle
Where tectonic plates meetThe Pacific Ocean
Sea strait and land bridge
Asia's coldest sea
The "Arctic" of the Pacific
Alaska's unique climate
The land below the sea
"Black smokers" in the Alaska current
Where the sea is at its deepest
The formation of Hawaii
The whales of Baja California
Sahul: the submerged land
Island arcs on deep-sea slopes
The Galapagos Archipelago
In the land of the giant squid
A sea of sinking volcanoes
El Ni±o begins off Peru's coast
Skerries in the South Pacific
Rough seas and stormy weatherThe Indian Ocean
The Red Sea's colors
Monsoons and fish graveyards
The mud of the Ganges
The ocean of many islands
Home a primeval fish
A junction of ocean ridges
Where two ridges meet
A cold and rapid current
An island between two oceans
Remainder of a sunken continentThe Arctic and Antarctic
Land masses and sea basins at the Poles
The oscillating North Pole
In the ice free Polar Sea
In the land of mighty rivers
Mountains at the North Pole
A primary source of cold water
A meteorite and the tsunamis
The pulsing Antarctic coast
Gateway to the AntarcticThe Mediterranean
Individual basins and their water depths
Deadly algae threatens the sea
The seas on either side of Italy
The Aegean Sea: sunken land
The Black Sea's "death zone"
Gilbraltar's currents and rises
Between Scylla and Charybdis
In the deep Levantine BasinThe North Sea and the Baltic
The shallow border seas of the Atlantic
When the North Sea was formed
Gateway to the North Atlantic
The oily sea off Norway
Between sea and land
The narrow passage to the Baltic
The Baltic's brackish water
The island from the Ice Age
When the Baltic Sea freezes up
Index, photo credits
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

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Excerpts

Preface Dear Reader: You hold in your hands an atlas covering a part of the world hitherto unknown to us. For the first time, all the important discoveries of modern marine exploration and oceanography have been assembled in this World Atlas of the Oceans, together with data on topographical features of the oceans of the world, exact details regarding the depths of all ocean trenches, as well as detailed information on the many "sea mounts" and underwater mountain ranges which play such an important role for marine life. The volume provides authoritative yet easily understandable information for the scientifically minded individual. Interest in oceanography was first aroused 150 years ago, but it was not until the second half of the 20th century that a coordinated research effort was made on an international level, allowing knowledge to be meticulously and systematically gathered. From then on, major seafaring nations such as the United States, the former USSR, Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, India, South Africa, Argentina, and Brazil worked together; each participating country sharing in the enormous costs but, at the same time, able to concentrate on its own, unique research area. United under the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) in Monaco and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of the United Nations, the results of the world-wide marine research operation were finally published by the Canadian Hydrographic Service in an unprecedented collection of charts -- the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO). This collection of ocean charts was published at the beginning of the 1980s in a small edition for collectors; there were few copies available and the charts were only known to specialists and experts. The World Atlas of the Oceans puts an end to this exclusivity by providing the GEBCO charts for the first time in an atlas format. For this purpose, the original GEBCO charts have been divided into segments, and these chart segments are published in their original format. In cases where the legends on the bathymetric charts have made it necessary, we have repositioned the text to make the cartographical representation of the ocean bed more comprehensible and to identify heights and depths. The depth lines of the ocean bed are given in meters, the color and varying intensity of the blues illustrate the differences in depth, and the faint brown lines mark the passage of each of the exploratory voyages of the surveying vessels. To illustrate the topography of the ocean bed, a second atlas of panoramic drawings of the world oceans has been used. It was created by the Austrian artist Heinrich C. Berann (1915-99) at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the '70s for the National Geographic Society. These panoramic drawings still remain the most impressive representations of the ocean bed. Even if some of the details in Berann's illustrations are in need of correction -- they could not take into account the results of recent research -- they continue to impart, as no other atlas does, a picture of the steep drops of the continental shelves, the vast expanses of ocean basins, the deep trenches, and the mighty mountain ranges which stretch for 60,000 kilometers (37,284 mi.) through the seas. At the same time, Berann's drawings are such an exact representation of the ocean bed that it was decided to illustrate each of the ocean regions on the segments of the GEBCO charts with a corresponding section from the relief charts. Occasional inaccuracies are more than compensated for by the graphic quality with which Heinrich C. Berann visualized the mysteries of the ocean bed beneath the waves. The maps published in this atlas are labeled in a variety of ways. While place names on the relief maps are provided in English, those on the bathymetric