Here are 40 Interesting Pacific Ocean facts.
1-5 Pacific Ocean Facts
1. There is a pass in Wyoming where a stream splits and half the water goes to the Pacific Ocean and half goes to the Atlantic Ocean. – Source
2. A $350m drillship built in the early ’70s by US billionaire, Howard Hughes, to collect ‘mineral riches’ from the ocean floor was actually a cover for the CIA to be used to lift a lost Soviet submarine, loaded with nuclear missiles, up from the floor of thePacific Ocean, 3 miles deep. – Source
3. In 1992, 28000 rubber ducks fell off a shipping container in the Pacific Ocean and revolutionized our understanding of ocean circulation. – Source
4. When ships pass through Point Nemo in the southern Pacific Ocean, the closest other humans are in the International Space Station 400km up. – Source
5. Every year hundreds of Great White Sharks migrate to a random area in the mid-Pacific Ocean and loiter around, no one knowing why. This area has been coined as the “White Shark Cafe'”. – Source
6-10 Pacific Ocean Facts
6. There’s a giant donut island in the middle of the Pacific ocean that has feral cats and a “sizeable lagoon” in the middle. – Source
7. The Amazon River once flowed into the Pacific Ocean but was dammed up by the newly formed Andes Mountains. The Amazon’s basin then became a giant lake until it eroded away sandstone to the west, letting the lake drain into the Atlantic and forming the modern river. – Source
8. In 2012, Jose Alvarenga, a Salvadorian fisherman, survived 438 days on a raft in the Pacific Ocean. With no motor or GPS or food, he survived on raw turtle and fish, rainwater, turtle blood, and his own urine. He is believed to be the longest surviving castaway. – Source
9. There is an area in the middle of the Pacific Ocean where no longer needed spacecraft are and have been routinely deposited. It is known as the “Spacecraft cemetery”, and notably it is also the place where the defunct Mir space station rests. – Source
10. Snails have crossed from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean, alive, by being digested by birds and being pooped out, still living. – Source
11-15 Pacific Ocean Facts
11. Singapore Airlines flight 21 which had the longest non-stop flight (18 hours), from Singapore to New Jersey, had special lockers on the plane to store corpses if people died en route since the flight path over the Pacific Ocean and the North Pole meant the plane couldn’t land if someone died. – Source
12. There is an island in the Pacific Ocean that uses huge, immovable stone discs as currency. When a purchase is made, instead of moving a stone disc, it is simply “publicly reassigned” to a new owner. – Source
13. There is an intact cask of plutonium dioxide on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean because Apollo 13 failed to land on the moon. – Source
14. The U.S. Navy’s most secretive naval base is located in a remote lake in northern Idaho. This base is believed to be used to develop stealth submarine technology and some locals believe that there is an underground waterway to the Pacific Ocean used for top-secret deployment. – Source
15. Coconuts do in fact migrate, being buoyant enough to float on the current of the tropical Pacific Ocean until it is washed up on land to take root and grow. – Source
16-20 Pacific Ocean Facts
16. There is a mobile spaceport floating out in the Pacific Ocean that has been in use since the late 1990s. – Source
17. The largest volcano on Earth is named Tamu Massif. Located at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean it has a surface area the same as New Mexico making it one of the largest volcanoes in the Solar System. – Source
18. The mysterious bloop recorded in the Pacific Ocean in 1997 is not a large unknown organic species, but rather enormous ice-quakes. – Source
19. Thor Heyerdahl traveled over 4000 miles across the Pacific Ocean in a wooden raft to demonstrate his theory that Polynesians came from South America. – Source
20. When the Robertson family was shipwrecked in the Pacific Ocean, the only water they had was poisonous. The mother gave the others enemas to safely hydrate them with it. The family survived for 37 days before rescue. – Source
21-25 Pacific Ocean Facts
21. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is now 2,000 times the size of NYC and growing rapidly. – Source
22. There is no December 30, 2011, in the history of the Pacific Ocean islands of Samoa and Tokelau as the day was skipped when these islands moved their time zone from the last time zone east of the international date line to the first west of the dateline. – Source
23. Scientists have defined “Zealandia” as the world’s 8th continent, 94 percent of which is below the Pacific Ocean. – Source
24. In 2001, Taco Bell towed a large target into the Pacific Ocean. They promised a free taco to every citizen of the U.S. if a piece of the Mir Space Station hit it upon re-entry. – Source
25. ~4-10% of islanders on the atoll Pingelap in the Pacific Ocean have no working cones, leaving them completely color blind. – Source
