Pacific Ocean
Bounded by Asia and Australia to the west and the Americas to the east, the Pacific Ocean is the Earth's most extensive and deepest ocean. It extends from the Bering Strait in the north to 60° S, where it meets the Southern Ocean. The Pacific Ocean covers about 46% of the planet's water surface and about one-third of its total surface area, more than its combined continental land mass.
For convenience, the Pacific is often divided at the Equator and designated as the North and South Pacific Oceans. The Coriolis effect reinforces this convenient subdivision, producing two largely independent volumes of water with different circulation patterns.
Although the Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa called the body of water he sighted after crossing the Isthmus of Panama in 1513 the Mar del Sur (South Sea), Ferdinand Magellan coined the ocean's current name during the Spanish circumnavigation in 1521. After a tortuous passage through the Straits of Magellan, he encountered milder conditions and favourable winds, prompting the label of Mar Pacífico (Peaceful Sea).
