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Ocean: An Illustrated Atlas
Detailing a mysterious realm that’s as vital to our existence as the air we breathe, this new atlas immerses readers in the wonders of the deep through more than 250 up-to-the-minute maps, photographs, and satellite images. Deep-sea pioneer and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Sylvia A. Earle (known as "Her Deepness") and marine scientist Linda K. Glover guide the adventure, in consultation with experts from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—who welcome the publication of a comprehensive ocean atlas geared to popular readers.
The accessible text lays out key concepts, points of interest, and little known facts, opening our eyes to living phenomena from giant squid to tiny microbial bodies. Astonishing full-color photographs and diagrams reveal the beauty and complexity of ocean life. Unprecedented new full spread maps of the ocean floor—hand-drawn by expert cartographers—reveal the five major oceans in astonishing details. An unequaled resource for both education and entertainment, Ocean also explores the progress of fascinating technologies that will help scientists discover uncharted regions and life-forms. In light of recent events—the tsunami of 2004, Katrina and Rita of 2005, the growth of the ozone hole—humankind’s link to the ocean is front and center in our lives today. This rich informative, and timely atlas, encourages understanding of how the ocean correlates with these happenings—and how human maintenance of its waters and creatures will keep the planet going.
The accessible text lays out key concepts, points of interest, and little known facts, opening our eyes to living phenomena from giant squid to tiny microbial bodies. Astonishing full-color photographs and diagrams reveal the beauty and complexity of ocean life. Unprecedented new full spread maps of the ocean floor—hand-drawn by expert cartographers—reveal the five major oceans in astonishing details. An unequaled resource for both education and entertainment, Ocean also explores the progress of fascinating technologies that will help scientists discover uncharted regions and life-forms. In light of recent events—the tsunami of 2004, Katrina and Rita of 2005, the growth of the ozone hole—humankind’s link to the ocean is front and center in our lives today. This rich informative, and timely atlas, encourages understanding of how the ocean correlates with these happenings—and how human maintenance of its waters and creatures will keep the planet going.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published October 28, 2008
1 person is currently reading
215 people want to read
About the author
Sylvia A. Earle
48 books255 followersSylvia A. Earle is an American oceanographer, aquanaut, and author.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 11, 2023
A map is visual.
It is manmade, depicting something primal and essential about nature and the land and sea. Maps can be technical and dry and people don’t usually exclaim of the beauty of a map.
I am here to exclaim of the layered beauty of this atlas and the maps.
A map seems logical with all the boxes created by longitudinal and latitude lines. We have all internalized the shapes of continents by now and most of us, even if not talented artistically, could draw the basics of a world map. I loved this atlas and spent hours reading or examining the maps, just looking.
2023: Atlantic
Nothing lasts long under the same form.
I have seen what once was solid earth changed into sea,
And lands created out of what once was ocean.
Seashells lie far away from the ocean’s waves… Ovid
On a recent trip to the Florida Keys, I was absolutely astonished by what I didn’t know about the ocean around them, how shallow it can be, and filled with seagrass, and sand bars, so that no waves touch the shore where we were in Islamorada, in the Middle Keys. The Upper and Middle Keys are in Florida Bay which is located between the southern end of the Florida mainland (the Florida Everglades) and the Florida Keys in the United States. It is a large, shallow estuary that while connected to the Gulf of Mexico, has limited exchange of water due to various shallow mudbanks, reefs, and sandbars and basins that are limned by seagrass. The banks separate the bay into basins, each with its own unique ecosystems.
We did go to Bahia Honda Key which does have waves, which I really need to truly feel like I am by the ocean. I was thinking of where you look when you look out across the Atlantic, and there is a new map out that shows how the curvature of the earth skews what you think, since what you are thinking of is what would be across a flat map, and we know the earth is not flat. It is fascinating.
What I didn’t realized until rereading the atlas was that the Bahamas are in the way of your sight view. The largest island, Andros, actually, which is fairly unspoiled and looks gorgeous and tropical. Past the Bahamas is the continent of Africa at Sierra Leone, perhaps skipping over the Sargasso Sea, and maybe the Cape Verde Islands. The Tropic of Cancer is below Key West, so not quite in the tropics, and getting below the equator is such a dream I have. I also tried to wrap my head around the fact that the deepest point of the Atlantic Ocean is not far, the Puerto Rico Trench, 28,232 feet below sea level, located north of Puerto Rico and separates the Atlantic from the Caribbean Sea and is 497 miles long and is deepest on the west and stretches east to the eastern Leeward Antilles like Antigua and Barbuda, less than 22,000 feet below sea level. Still impressive. I sat on a beach in Antigua that was closed due to sargassum but had the waves I needed, and didn’t realize what I was looking at, when I glanced to the northeast, but now can add that to that memory, layer it into more complexity and richness.
Of course, the geology also gets fascinating, since the lowest point is usually significant for plate boundaries, and it is the transition point between the subducting Lesser Antilles and the transform fault zone that extends west to Cuba, Central America, Espanola, and the Cayman Islands and the trench is the point where the Caribbean plate and the North American plate separates. The Caribbean plate is moving east while the North American plate is moving west. Geological studies suggest that earthquakes originating from the fault zone are likely to generate destructive tsunamis.
Part of the deep wonder of this is the idea of all the shallow waters of the Caribbean that are turquoise juxtaposed with the deep blue of deep ocean waters where we still can’t penetrate easily, and I may never be; my brain asks why aren’t they further apart, and how does that possibly create some of the beauty? I can feel and sense the deep waters and the shelf leading up to the Caribbean where the plates are separating. There is an abyssal plain, the Silver plain between the trench and the Bahamas, and another, the Nares Plain north towards Bermuda. An abyssal plain is an underwater plain on the deep ocean floor, usually found at depths between 9,800 and 19,700 feet below sea level. Occurring generally between the foot of a continental rise and a mid-ocean ridge, abyssal plains cover more than 50% of the Earth's surface. They are flat and smooth like a prairie on land, and have not been explored at all. Remember, the Atlantic Basin is widening at an estimated rate of 1 to 10 cm (0.5 to 4 inches) per year, so there is wonder here also.
I also just relearned the Mid Atlantic Ridge does peek above the surface of the ocean at the 9 islands or island groups starting in the south with Bouvet’s Island administered by Norway, Tristan da Cunha, St. Helena, Ascension, the Azores, Iceland, Gough Island (U.K.)and the furthest north Jan Mayen in Norway. Maybe St. Peter’s Rock off the coast of Brazil. How did I not know this about Iceland? I want to step foot on one of these so badly now.
If I looked south from Islamorada, I would be looking at Cuba’s northern coast, at the Archipelago de Sabana-Camagüey, not far to the east of Havana, which has 2517 cays and islands, and home to 35 protected sites. It seems like a similar area to the Keys with mangrove and c0astal forests and just an astonishing amount of keys and islands to be off the coast of the island of Cuba. But then I look up how many keys make up the Florida keys and it is 800, also a significant amount that boggles the mind. A key is a type of island, so all keys area also islands, but only keys are made through coral build-up limestone. The Keys have over 1700 islands, and only 800 are keys. More mind boggling facts.
Pacific: “A chaos of waves rushed upon us and hurled us round and sideways…high waves and low waves, pointed waves and round waves, slanting waves and waves on top of other waves. The weeks passed. The whole sea was ours, and with all the gates of the horizon open, real peace and freedom were wafted down from the firmament itself.” Thor Heyerdahl
The Pacific is spreading of South American but overall shrinking as the Mid Atlantic Ridge pushes outwards and seafloor is destroyed in subduction zones along the entire Pacific Rim. The Atlantic, Arctic, and Indian oceans are surrounded by continents moving away from the spreading centers, but the Pacific is colliding with continents from every direction. The huge Pacific and North American plates are moving north/south opposites along the San Andreas fault where the Pacific Plate in beneath the North American plate. The East Pacific Rise is parallel to South America and is spreading at 20 cm a year, ending at the Gulf of California. A large piece of the California coast may separate one day and be an island with the cities of San Diego to San Francisco, or what remains of them by then.
It is large enough to sink all of the continents or 2 Atlantic Oceans. Named by Magellan after he rounded the rough waters of Tierra del Fuego, it’s vast open areas allow the sweep of winds and currents to build into huge forces, and seismic activity in the Ring of Fire disrupts the system as well.
The 25,000 islands in the Pacific show 2 different trends, either as volcanic islands trending north-south over subduction zones like Fiji, Tongas, and Marianas or, they run in parallel lines trending west-northwest, east-southeast over hundreds of miles like the Hawaiian Islands, the northernmost, Caroline Islands, Solomon Islands, French Polynesian Islands, the Cook islands, and the Galapagos. The huge Pacific Ocean Basin has moved over several hot spots over 150 million years that create one seamount at a time. There are over 30,000 seamounts below the surface of the ocean.
An island in the making, formerly known as the Lō‘ihi seamount, now renamed to Kama‘ehuakanaloa, is rising at 16 feet per year, but may not reach the ocean surface for 200,000 years especially if sea level rises. Indigenous Hawaiian scholars changed the name in reference to oral history that talk of "Kama‘ehu," the red island child of Haumea (earth) and Kanaloa (sea) that rises from the deep in the ocean floor.
It's not known when it will breach sea level. We can speculate that with a growth rate of 5 m (16.4 ft) per 1000 years it will take as much as 200,000 years to reach the ocean surface. It all depends upon the eruption rate. A new island was just formed in Japan, unnamed so far, 328 feet in diameter and as high as 66 feet above the sea, but made of crumbly rock that is easily washed away, so may not last long. I wonder how many of these littles possible islands have risen and fallen in the course of eternity, and what we can learn about deep time from them. I imagine it is hard to get too close in case another eruption happens, but drones and robots can possibly sample them; I wonder if anyone is on a boat as close as is safe just watching it, feeling the sea wind, the salt air, the glitter of sunshine on the water, or if they are all inside watching on a screen.
The volcano's former name, means "long" in Hawaiian and was introduced in 1955 to describe the elongate shape of the seamount. More recently, Hawaiian scholars have found that stories of "Kama‘ehu," the red island child of Haumea (earth) and Kanaloa (sea) that rises from the deep in the ocean floor may also be a reference to this submarine volcano.
The Great Barrier Reef has more diversity of animals than all of the planet’s combined rain forest ecosystems. The Coral Sea is about 5 degrees cooler than the Caribbean about 5 degrees further south from the equator than the Caribbean is north of it. It touches Australia to the west; New Caledonia and Republic of Vanuatu to the east; and the southern coast of New Guinea to the northwest and the Solomon Islands int eh northeast. It connects with the Tasman Sea in the south, which separates New Zealand and Australia, the Soloman Sea to the north, the east with the greater Pacific, and through the Torres Strait to the Arafura Sea that separates Australia and New Guinea.
The diversity of life is just astonishing. There are 49 different ecosystems, and the islands have over 2,200 floral species; 52 species of sharks and rays; 30 species of whales and dolphins, 18 coral reef systems, 1500 fish species and 200 species of seabirds. 8,378 miles to the east is the Galapagos Islands, and sailing in the curved lines that is direct, you would cross and pass the equator and then come back south a little bit, since they straddle the equator. I am starting to think that this part of the globe, the equatorial band, is my favorite. On this journey, you would pass through the Coral Sea, passing by the only 3 islands of the Coral Sea, uninhabited except a weather stations, and as this is a dream, you would not have to stop at big islands off course, and perhaps you would stop by Nendö, an island of the Solomon Islands in Melanesia, which also was known at Queen Charlotte’s Islands, not to be confused with the northern pacific Queen Charlotte’s islands now known as Haida Gwaii; but also known as the Santa Cruz Islands that a Spanish navigator named in 1595 and tried to start a colony on. The island is also known as Santa Cruz, Ndeni, Nitendi or Ndende.
Continuing on, perhaps you stop by the islands of Tuvalu, now in Polynesia, and considered to be hallway between Australia and Hawaii. 10 miles of landmass. You will cross over the Vityaz or East Melanesia Trench, named in 1958 by the Russian team that explored it; approximately 2-4 miles deep and associated with older plate boundaries. Nukulaelae is an atoll and the name means “land of sands.” It is an oval with 15 islets and a wide shallow lagoon. I have run across Tuvalu now in 4 places: the atlas, the news and a game I play that shows all the countries of the world. Very random. Tuvalu is proving what seems to be an absolute, or a paradox that recurs, where you find the greatest good, you will find the greatest evil, since evil loves paradise too. Sea level rise is threatening it, and Australia is wooing it to fight China’s incursions into Oceania.
From Tuvalu, we will pass through the Phoenix Islands of the nation of Kiribati and partly to cross the equator there and be in all 4 hemispheres at once. Kiribati is the only country in the world to lie in all four hemispheres, crossing the equator and the International Date Line. It has a unique time zone to keep its islands in the same day. I feel like they own the ocean. The land is about 313 square miles over 1.3 million square miles of ocean. Like it is all over, they own it all from that and should be the deciding vote on all things around the environment. I think of my country and how our land is 1.3 million square miles, all this earth to put my feet on, or lie in the dirt, or on a rock; and they are the exact opposite, all this water to float in and be surrounded by and like Katherine Mays wrote, it would be like “the feeling of entering a vast cathedral, and, rather than sitting in its dry pews, that I am merging with it. I feel the pull of the tides, I am also feeling the pull of the whole world, of the moon and the sun; that I am part of a chain of interconnection that crosses galaxies.”
At this point, we are approximately 3500 miles from where we started, and that is an immense distance, larger than the US is wide (2,892 miles across from CA to Maine), and we aren’t even halfway to the Galapagos. Some resources says it takes 2-3 months to sail across the Pacific, without stops, so I am estimating 10 days per 1000 miles, and Panama to Australia is about 8000 nautical miles. Again, the immensity, the blue on the paper is actual, not just suggested, not exaggerated, real, like really real, and my mind is a little blown in the ecstasy of an opened mind. Like deep time, but slightly less infinite.
4500 miles to go still, and how much more can your mind be blown like mine? The curvature of the earth will have us moving north a bit more, then curving southeast. I would like to pay my respects at Kiritimati pronounced Ki-ris-i-mas (Christmas Island), which seems like the last stop before open ocean all the way to the Galapagos. Technically Rapa Nui (Easter Island) is the easternmost point of Oceania but it is very isolated, The nearest human settlement is the island of Pitcairn 1,289 miles away while the closest urban environment is Rikitea at 2,606 miles away.
And of course, I have forgotten the Pacific centered view of the globe that rejects the primacy of Europe. It is absolutely stunning for how we are shown to be connected by Russia and Alaska. I bought one for my nephew and one for myself and need to put it up. Looking at that one showed me more clearly where the international date line is and there may be a few hours where you go back a day before arriving at Kiritimati and then forward a day; and then a few hours off the island, back into the old day. Of course, it doesn’t affect anything like airplane travel does, but it is a little confusing. Some wonder and magic of our planet.
“I discovered that in Kiribati, there is a tradition of collective responsibility. This is denoted by the phrase “bubuti”, which means a request from a friend that cannot be refused. This highlighted to me how much we can learn from these communities. The concept of bubuti deserves an international extension. Because globally, we must accept and respond to the long-term effects of nuclear weapons testing – and other impending threats, including climate change.” Becky Alexis-Martin
It is manmade, depicting something primal and essential about nature and the land and sea. Maps can be technical and dry and people don’t usually exclaim of the beauty of a map.
I am here to exclaim of the layered beauty of this atlas and the maps.
A map seems logical with all the boxes created by longitudinal and latitude lines. We have all internalized the shapes of continents by now and most of us, even if not talented artistically, could draw the basics of a world map. I loved this atlas and spent hours reading or examining the maps, just looking.
2023: Atlantic
Nothing lasts long under the same form.
I have seen what once was solid earth changed into sea,
And lands created out of what once was ocean.
Seashells lie far away from the ocean’s waves… Ovid
On a recent trip to the Florida Keys, I was absolutely astonished by what I didn’t know about the ocean around them, how shallow it can be, and filled with seagrass, and sand bars, so that no waves touch the shore where we were in Islamorada, in the Middle Keys. The Upper and Middle Keys are in Florida Bay which is located between the southern end of the Florida mainland (the Florida Everglades) and the Florida Keys in the United States. It is a large, shallow estuary that while connected to the Gulf of Mexico, has limited exchange of water due to various shallow mudbanks, reefs, and sandbars and basins that are limned by seagrass. The banks separate the bay into basins, each with its own unique ecosystems.
We did go to Bahia Honda Key which does have waves, which I really need to truly feel like I am by the ocean. I was thinking of where you look when you look out across the Atlantic, and there is a new map out that shows how the curvature of the earth skews what you think, since what you are thinking of is what would be across a flat map, and we know the earth is not flat. It is fascinating.
What I didn’t realized until rereading the atlas was that the Bahamas are in the way of your sight view. The largest island, Andros, actually, which is fairly unspoiled and looks gorgeous and tropical. Past the Bahamas is the continent of Africa at Sierra Leone, perhaps skipping over the Sargasso Sea, and maybe the Cape Verde Islands. The Tropic of Cancer is below Key West, so not quite in the tropics, and getting below the equator is such a dream I have. I also tried to wrap my head around the fact that the deepest point of the Atlantic Ocean is not far, the Puerto Rico Trench, 28,232 feet below sea level, located north of Puerto Rico and separates the Atlantic from the Caribbean Sea and is 497 miles long and is deepest on the west and stretches east to the eastern Leeward Antilles like Antigua and Barbuda, less than 22,000 feet below sea level. Still impressive. I sat on a beach in Antigua that was closed due to sargassum but had the waves I needed, and didn’t realize what I was looking at, when I glanced to the northeast, but now can add that to that memory, layer it into more complexity and richness.
Of course, the geology also gets fascinating, since the lowest point is usually significant for plate boundaries, and it is the transition point between the subducting Lesser Antilles and the transform fault zone that extends west to Cuba, Central America, Espanola, and the Cayman Islands and the trench is the point where the Caribbean plate and the North American plate separates. The Caribbean plate is moving east while the North American plate is moving west. Geological studies suggest that earthquakes originating from the fault zone are likely to generate destructive tsunamis.
Part of the deep wonder of this is the idea of all the shallow waters of the Caribbean that are turquoise juxtaposed with the deep blue of deep ocean waters where we still can’t penetrate easily, and I may never be; my brain asks why aren’t they further apart, and how does that possibly create some of the beauty? I can feel and sense the deep waters and the shelf leading up to the Caribbean where the plates are separating. There is an abyssal plain, the Silver plain between the trench and the Bahamas, and another, the Nares Plain north towards Bermuda. An abyssal plain is an underwater plain on the deep ocean floor, usually found at depths between 9,800 and 19,700 feet below sea level. Occurring generally between the foot of a continental rise and a mid-ocean ridge, abyssal plains cover more than 50% of the Earth's surface. They are flat and smooth like a prairie on land, and have not been explored at all. Remember, the Atlantic Basin is widening at an estimated rate of 1 to 10 cm (0.5 to 4 inches) per year, so there is wonder here also.
I also just relearned the Mid Atlantic Ridge does peek above the surface of the ocean at the 9 islands or island groups starting in the south with Bouvet’s Island administered by Norway, Tristan da Cunha, St. Helena, Ascension, the Azores, Iceland, Gough Island (U.K.)and the furthest north Jan Mayen in Norway. Maybe St. Peter’s Rock off the coast of Brazil. How did I not know this about Iceland? I want to step foot on one of these so badly now.
If I looked south from Islamorada, I would be looking at Cuba’s northern coast, at the Archipelago de Sabana-Camagüey, not far to the east of Havana, which has 2517 cays and islands, and home to 35 protected sites. It seems like a similar area to the Keys with mangrove and c0astal forests and just an astonishing amount of keys and islands to be off the coast of the island of Cuba. But then I look up how many keys make up the Florida keys and it is 800, also a significant amount that boggles the mind. A key is a type of island, so all keys area also islands, but only keys are made through coral build-up limestone. The Keys have over 1700 islands, and only 800 are keys. More mind boggling facts.
Pacific: “A chaos of waves rushed upon us and hurled us round and sideways…high waves and low waves, pointed waves and round waves, slanting waves and waves on top of other waves. The weeks passed. The whole sea was ours, and with all the gates of the horizon open, real peace and freedom were wafted down from the firmament itself.” Thor Heyerdahl
The Pacific is spreading of South American but overall shrinking as the Mid Atlantic Ridge pushes outwards and seafloor is destroyed in subduction zones along the entire Pacific Rim. The Atlantic, Arctic, and Indian oceans are surrounded by continents moving away from the spreading centers, but the Pacific is colliding with continents from every direction. The huge Pacific and North American plates are moving north/south opposites along the San Andreas fault where the Pacific Plate in beneath the North American plate. The East Pacific Rise is parallel to South America and is spreading at 20 cm a year, ending at the Gulf of California. A large piece of the California coast may separate one day and be an island with the cities of San Diego to San Francisco, or what remains of them by then.
It is large enough to sink all of the continents or 2 Atlantic Oceans. Named by Magellan after he rounded the rough waters of Tierra del Fuego, it’s vast open areas allow the sweep of winds and currents to build into huge forces, and seismic activity in the Ring of Fire disrupts the system as well.
The 25,000 islands in the Pacific show 2 different trends, either as volcanic islands trending north-south over subduction zones like Fiji, Tongas, and Marianas or, they run in parallel lines trending west-northwest, east-southeast over hundreds of miles like the Hawaiian Islands, the northernmost, Caroline Islands, Solomon Islands, French Polynesian Islands, the Cook islands, and the Galapagos. The huge Pacific Ocean Basin has moved over several hot spots over 150 million years that create one seamount at a time. There are over 30,000 seamounts below the surface of the ocean.
An island in the making, formerly known as the Lō‘ihi seamount, now renamed to Kama‘ehuakanaloa, is rising at 16 feet per year, but may not reach the ocean surface for 200,000 years especially if sea level rises. Indigenous Hawaiian scholars changed the name in reference to oral history that talk of "Kama‘ehu," the red island child of Haumea (earth) and Kanaloa (sea) that rises from the deep in the ocean floor.
It's not known when it will breach sea level. We can speculate that with a growth rate of 5 m (16.4 ft) per 1000 years it will take as much as 200,000 years to reach the ocean surface. It all depends upon the eruption rate. A new island was just formed in Japan, unnamed so far, 328 feet in diameter and as high as 66 feet above the sea, but made of crumbly rock that is easily washed away, so may not last long. I wonder how many of these littles possible islands have risen and fallen in the course of eternity, and what we can learn about deep time from them. I imagine it is hard to get too close in case another eruption happens, but drones and robots can possibly sample them; I wonder if anyone is on a boat as close as is safe just watching it, feeling the sea wind, the salt air, the glitter of sunshine on the water, or if they are all inside watching on a screen.
The volcano's former name, means "long" in Hawaiian and was introduced in 1955 to describe the elongate shape of the seamount. More recently, Hawaiian scholars have found that stories of "Kama‘ehu," the red island child of Haumea (earth) and Kanaloa (sea) that rises from the deep in the ocean floor may also be a reference to this submarine volcano.
The Great Barrier Reef has more diversity of animals than all of the planet’s combined rain forest ecosystems. The Coral Sea is about 5 degrees cooler than the Caribbean about 5 degrees further south from the equator than the Caribbean is north of it. It touches Australia to the west; New Caledonia and Republic of Vanuatu to the east; and the southern coast of New Guinea to the northwest and the Solomon Islands int eh northeast. It connects with the Tasman Sea in the south, which separates New Zealand and Australia, the Soloman Sea to the north, the east with the greater Pacific, and through the Torres Strait to the Arafura Sea that separates Australia and New Guinea.
The diversity of life is just astonishing. There are 49 different ecosystems, and the islands have over 2,200 floral species; 52 species of sharks and rays; 30 species of whales and dolphins, 18 coral reef systems, 1500 fish species and 200 species of seabirds. 8,378 miles to the east is the Galapagos Islands, and sailing in the curved lines that is direct, you would cross and pass the equator and then come back south a little bit, since they straddle the equator. I am starting to think that this part of the globe, the equatorial band, is my favorite. On this journey, you would pass through the Coral Sea, passing by the only 3 islands of the Coral Sea, uninhabited except a weather stations, and as this is a dream, you would not have to stop at big islands off course, and perhaps you would stop by Nendö, an island of the Solomon Islands in Melanesia, which also was known at Queen Charlotte’s Islands, not to be confused with the northern pacific Queen Charlotte’s islands now known as Haida Gwaii; but also known as the Santa Cruz Islands that a Spanish navigator named in 1595 and tried to start a colony on. The island is also known as Santa Cruz, Ndeni, Nitendi or Ndende.
Continuing on, perhaps you stop by the islands of Tuvalu, now in Polynesia, and considered to be hallway between Australia and Hawaii. 10 miles of landmass. You will cross over the Vityaz or East Melanesia Trench, named in 1958 by the Russian team that explored it; approximately 2-4 miles deep and associated with older plate boundaries. Nukulaelae is an atoll and the name means “land of sands.” It is an oval with 15 islets and a wide shallow lagoon. I have run across Tuvalu now in 4 places: the atlas, the news and a game I play that shows all the countries of the world. Very random. Tuvalu is proving what seems to be an absolute, or a paradox that recurs, where you find the greatest good, you will find the greatest evil, since evil loves paradise too. Sea level rise is threatening it, and Australia is wooing it to fight China’s incursions into Oceania.
From Tuvalu, we will pass through the Phoenix Islands of the nation of Kiribati and partly to cross the equator there and be in all 4 hemispheres at once. Kiribati is the only country in the world to lie in all four hemispheres, crossing the equator and the International Date Line. It has a unique time zone to keep its islands in the same day. I feel like they own the ocean. The land is about 313 square miles over 1.3 million square miles of ocean. Like it is all over, they own it all from that and should be the deciding vote on all things around the environment. I think of my country and how our land is 1.3 million square miles, all this earth to put my feet on, or lie in the dirt, or on a rock; and they are the exact opposite, all this water to float in and be surrounded by and like Katherine Mays wrote, it would be like “the feeling of entering a vast cathedral, and, rather than sitting in its dry pews, that I am merging with it. I feel the pull of the tides, I am also feeling the pull of the whole world, of the moon and the sun; that I am part of a chain of interconnection that crosses galaxies.”
At this point, we are approximately 3500 miles from where we started, and that is an immense distance, larger than the US is wide (2,892 miles across from CA to Maine), and we aren’t even halfway to the Galapagos. Some resources says it takes 2-3 months to sail across the Pacific, without stops, so I am estimating 10 days per 1000 miles, and Panama to Australia is about 8000 nautical miles. Again, the immensity, the blue on the paper is actual, not just suggested, not exaggerated, real, like really real, and my mind is a little blown in the ecstasy of an opened mind. Like deep time, but slightly less infinite.
4500 miles to go still, and how much more can your mind be blown like mine? The curvature of the earth will have us moving north a bit more, then curving southeast. I would like to pay my respects at Kiritimati pronounced Ki-ris-i-mas (Christmas Island), which seems like the last stop before open ocean all the way to the Galapagos. Technically Rapa Nui (Easter Island) is the easternmost point of Oceania but it is very isolated, The nearest human settlement is the island of Pitcairn 1,289 miles away while the closest urban environment is Rikitea at 2,606 miles away.
And of course, I have forgotten the Pacific centered view of the globe that rejects the primacy of Europe. It is absolutely stunning for how we are shown to be connected by Russia and Alaska. I bought one for my nephew and one for myself and need to put it up. Looking at that one showed me more clearly where the international date line is and there may be a few hours where you go back a day before arriving at Kiritimati and then forward a day; and then a few hours off the island, back into the old day. Of course, it doesn’t affect anything like airplane travel does, but it is a little confusing. Some wonder and magic of our planet.
“I discovered that in Kiribati, there is a tradition of collective responsibility. This is denoted by the phrase “bubuti”, which means a request from a friend that cannot be refused. This highlighted to me how much we can learn from these communities. The concept of bubuti deserves an international extension. Because globally, we must accept and respond to the long-term effects of nuclear weapons testing – and other impending threats, including climate change.” Becky Alexis-Martin
June 28, 2016
Read my review here: http://www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blo...
May 29, 2013
beautiful and informative.
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