Look at a globe, a world map or really any kind of physical representation of our beautiful, lovely planet. What do you notice? Obviously, there is a whole lot of blue all over the place—Earth is about 71 percent water after all. More than that, about 96 percent of all that wet, wonderful water is found in the oceans, according to the United States Geological Survey. That amounts to about 352,670,000,000,000,000,000 gallons of water.
A further world map examination can lead to an additional, more troubling conclusion: the oceans are all connected. All those gallons of water are linked with no true boundaries to distinguish them. There is no large landmass that separates any of these major bodies of water, so why do they have different names? “Atlantic,” “Pacific,” what does it matter? The names of the oceans are arbitrary; they are all connected and so they should all share a name. I propose that we abolish the names of the oceans and refer to them all collectively as “Big Blue” instead.
The world can’t even agree on how many distinct oceans there are in the first place! According to the World Atlas, the world is historically thought to have four different oceans: the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and Arctic. Many countries, however, believe that there is a fifth distinct ocean: the Southern (or Antarctic) Ocean. The fact that we cannot agree amongst ourselves how many oceans there are in the first place proves that the distinctions between them are groundless. The capricious nature of labeling the oceans needs not to be an issue though, as calling them Big Blue collectively would erase these issues.
Way back when all the continents were connected and the supercontinent Pangea reigned, there was an ancient ocean that surrounded it—Panthalassa. The only reason that Panthalassa got renamed into the four (or five) “distinct” oceans is because continental separation created supposedly distinguishable areas where Big Blue seems to be divided. Big Blue is not divided, however, because there are always areas where the oceans are connected. The only example of an ocean that became closed off from the larger collective is the Caspian Sea, which justifiably has its own name and thus is not a part of Big Blue. What we typically refer to as distinct oceans do not have that same excuse.
Additionally, there is no scientific reason for labeling the different bodies of water. There’s this picture that regularly circulates social media that shows a distinct border, visible due to differences in water’s color, between what is supposedly two different oceans; the picture is regularly captioned as “the place where two oceans meet.” According to Snopes, however, the image is miscaptioned as it actually captures what occurs when sediment-laden water from glacial rivers empties out into the ocean, not what happens when two oceans meet. Furthermore, that boundary isn’t even permanent as eventually the water will blend and look unified once more. Such boundaries are not static locations where oceans meet because there are no boundaries. Even using the plural form of “oceans” is incorrect because there aren’t multiple. There is only one. Big Blue.
W.C. Hoag is a communication major senior who wants you to read his WTF column on page 12.