How Much of the Ocean is Unexplored?
How much of the ocean is unexplored? Very little, according to those who study it. Only 5% of the sea is analyzed, meaning that most of its secrets are still waiting to be discovered by humanity. There’s an endless amount of mysteries just waiting to be solved by curious oceanographers, including how much life exists in the deep sea, how climate change affects underwater ecosystems, and what lurks at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.
The surface, it turns out, represents only 5% of Earth
We tend to forget just how big the ocean is. In terms of similar geography and sheer volume, it dwarfs everything else on Earth. The surface, it turns out, represents only 5% of Earth’s total area. The other 95% of the deep ocean—is an environment still largely unknown to us.
How much of the ocean have we explored? That’s a difficult question to react to because it’s hard to know where to draw the line. If we consider only the areas in detail, then the figure is around 0.2%. In other words, we’ve explored less than 1/500th of the ocean.
We have explored 2.2%
Though it may seem like we have explored a lot of our oceans, the reality is that we have only explored about 2.2%. It leaves a staggering 97.8% of the sea quiet to study.
The first 98% we’ll never explore
As you look out to the ocean, it seems infinite and vast. And in a way, it is. The middle depth of the sea is around 3.7 miles, and if you were to stack all the water on Earth on top of each other, it would only be about 860 miles tall. The Pacific Ocean alone covers more than 60 million square miles. With all that water, you’d think we would have explored every inch by now – but you’d be wrong.
There are three main reasons why we can never explore more than 2.2%
The ocean is a place. It’s so big that we have only explored a tiny fraction of it. So how much of the sea is unexplored?
We accomplish learning where to examine!
Sure, we’ve explored the depths of the sea and mapped out the seafloor, but that doesn’t mean we know everything there is to know about what’s down there. Scientists estimate that we have only explored 5 and 10 percent of the world’s oceans.
Gravity isn’t our guide.
Have you ever wondered how much of the ocean is unexplored? The answer might surprise you. According to current estimates, only about 5% of the sea is by humans. That means that 95% of the ocean is still a mystery.
Water is dense with life, both good and poor:
The ocean is a pervasive and largely unexplored place. According to some estimates, we have only explored about 5% of the world’s oceans. It leaves a lot of room for discoveries.
