126 articles
Panthalassa
Panthalassa, meaning "all water," was a vast global ocean surrounding Pangaea from the late Paleozoic into the early Mesozoic, with the Pacific Ocean as its modern remnant.
Paratethys
Paratethys was a vast shallow epicontinental sea that covered Eurasia's southern margin from about 33 million years ago into the Pliocene, leaving the Black, Caspian, and Aral seas.
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (Περίπλους τῆς Ἐρυθρᾶς Θαλάσσης)
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (Periplus Maris Erythraei): anonymous Greek merchant's handbook of the mid-1st century CE describing Red Sea, Arabian, and Indian Ocean trade routes, ports, and commodities, preserved in a single Heidelberg manuscript.
Pico Island (island, Portugal)
Pico Island (Ilha do Pico), second largest of Portugal's nine Azores islands, 447.9 km², holds Mount Pico at 2,351 m, Portugal's highest point, and the UNESCO-listed basalt-walled vineyard landscape inscribed in 2004.
Piracy off the coast of Somalia
Piracy off the coast of Somalia, or Somali piracy, is ransom-driven hijacking in the Gulf of Aden and western Indian Ocean that emerged after Somalia's 1991 state collapse, peaked in 2011, was suppressed by 2012, and resurged from 2024.
Polynesian navigation
Polynesian navigation, or wayfinding, is non-instrument Pacific navigation by stars, swells, winds, clouds, and birds. Key facts: Sharp's accidental-voyage theory, Hōkūleʻa's 1976 Hawaii–Tahiti voyage under Mau Piailug, and the modern voyaging revival.
Praia do Tonel
Praia do Tonel is a west-facing beach and surf break at Sagres, Algarve, below the Sagres Fortress, known for consistent Atlantic swell, strong rip currents, Blue Flag status, and winter surf up to 2 m.
Rheic Ocean
The Rheic Ocean was a Paleozoic ocean basin between Gondwana and Laurussia, opened about 490 Ma when Avalonia rifted from Gondwana, and closed in the Devonian–Carboniferous, producing the Variscan and Alleghanian orogenies and helping assemble Pangaea.
Ring of Fire
Ring of Fire (Pacific Ring of Fire): popular name for the circum-Pacific belt of subduction-zone volcanoes and earthquakes, not a scientific term. Holds 687 Holocene volcanoes (57% of world total) and about 81% of the largest earthquakes; first named by Carl Ritter in 1859.
Ross Gyre
Ross Gyre: cyclonic subpolar ocean gyre south of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current in the southwest Pacific, near the Ross Sea. Wind-driven circulation of roughly 20–45 Sv, area about 1.84 million square kilometers, affecting dense-water formation.
Santo Antão
Santo Antão (Ilha de Santo Antão), Cape Verde's westernmost and northernmost island: 779 km², Tope da Coroa 1,979 m, about 44,000 people, three municipalities, reached only by ferry from Mindelo; a mountainous hiking and farming island, not the Brazilian city Vitória de Santo Antão.
Sea ice in the Pacific Ocean
Sea ice in the Pacific Ocean forms at its polar margins: the Bering Sea, the Sea of Okhotsk, and the Pacific edge of the Antarctic pack.
Socotra
Socotra (سقطرى), Yemeni archipelago in the northwest Indian Ocean near the Gulf of Aden; UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site 2008 with 37% endemic plants, 90% endemic reptiles, 95% endemic land snails, dragon's blood trees, and threats from goats, cyclones, and Yemen's civil war.
Solomon Archipelago
Solomon Archipelago: marine ecoregion (MEOW, Eastern Coral Triangle province) spanning a 1,500 km arc from Bougainville to San Cristobal, with 516 coral species, Ontong Java atolls, Marovo Lagoon, and East Rennell World Heritage site.
Somali Current
Somali Current: seasonally reversing western boundary current of the Indian Ocean off East Africa, flowing northeast in the southwest monsoon at up to 3 m/s, reversing in winter, and driving the world's strongest seasonal coastal upwelling with the Great Whirl eddy.
Southern Ocean
The Southern Ocean, the ocean encircling Antarctica to 60°S, is defined by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and takes up roughly 43% of oceanic anthropogenic CO2 and 75% of ocean heat uptake.
Spice trade
The spice trade is the historic commerce in pepper, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg that moved from India and the Spice Islands to Europe, later dominated by Portuguese and Dutch maritime empires.
St. Martin's Island
St. Martin's Island (Narikel Zinzira) is Bangladesh's southernmost island in the Bay of Bengal near Teknaf, its only coral-bearing island, with sandstone base rock, 98 hard coral species, severe shoreline erosion, and a nine-month tourism ban since 2025.
Subtropical Indian Ocean Dipole
The Subtropical Indian Ocean Dipole (SIOD), also called the Indian Ocean Subtropical Dipole, is a climate variability mode in the southern Indian Ocean identified in 2001.
Tethys Ocean
Tethys Ocean (Téthys): ancient ocean between Gondwana and Laurasia, conceived by Suess; successive Paleo-, Meso-, and Neo-Tethys basins, once ~12,000 km wide, closed by the India-Eurasia collision, leaving the Mediterranean and Caspian as remnants.
The Exploration of the Pacific
The Exploration of the Pacific is a 1934 history by New Zealand historian John Cawte Beaglehole, covering European exploration from Magellan to Cook and founding his lifelong work on Captain James Cook.
Timeline of the European colonization of North America
Timeline of European colonization of North America: Spanish contact from 1492 and encomienda by 1502; Jamestown 1607, Quebec 1608, Santa Fe 1609; Dutch New Netherlands 1624; Treaty of Paris 1763; American independence 1776.
Transatlantic crossing
Transatlantic crossing: ocean or air voyage between Europe and the Americas. Norse crossed by AD 1021; steam cut weeks to days (SS United States record 3d 10h 40m, 1952); jets made it hours.
Triangular trade
Triangular trade: the 16th-19th century Atlantic circuit linking Europe, West Africa, and the Americas, in which manufactured goods were traded for enslaved Africans carried via the Middle Passage, and colonial commodities like sugar returned to Europe.
Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama (c. 1460s–1524), Portuguese navigator born in Sines, commanded the first European fleet to reach India by sea around Africa (1497–1499), landing at Calicut in 1498; later Admiral of the Indian seas under Manuel I.
Voyage of the James Caird
Voyage of the James Caird: 1916 open-boat journey by Ernest Shackleton and five companions about 800 miles from Elephant Island to South Georgia, rescuing the Endurance expedition; boat now at Dulwich College.
Voyages of Christopher Columbus
The voyages of Christopher Columbus: four transatlantic expeditions, 1492–1504, sponsored by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, reaching the Caribbean while seeking Asia; they began permanent contact between Europe and the Americas.
Voyages of James Cook
The voyages of James Cook were three British expeditions to the Pacific Ocean between 1768 and 1780, charting New Zealand, eastern Australia, and Antarctic waters.
Walker circulation
Walker circulation: the zonal atmospheric overturning loop over the equatorial Pacific, named for Gilbert Walker. Rising air over the western warm pool, sinking over the eastern Pacific; strengthened since 1979 but projected to weaken under greenhouse warming.
Weddell Gyre
The Weddell Gyre is the largest Southern Ocean subpolar gyre, a clockwise circulation spanning about 5.6 million km2 from the Antarctic Peninsula to 30 degrees E, transporting roughly 51-56 Sv and feeding Antarctic Bottom Water formation.