In a recent post, geo-blogger Catholicgauze discusses the proliferation of the Southern Ocean, created just a few years ago. His list is interesting; for example, he reports that National Geographic doesn't use the new name but Rand McNally does.
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I would like to remind you that as you surely know that this earth is covered by ONE ocean. Dispersed between this big body of water are all the lands of this planet. Far more of our planet is covered by water (3/4s)then land (or “earth.”) When our planet was named it might have been more appropriate to have called it Oceanis instead of Earth.
To my way of thinking you did not fully discuss the pros and the cons of this new geographic subdivision. What is the advantage to arbitrarily separating and naming another “ocean” from our large ocean?
You have a point there Elaine. The earth indeed is mostly coved by a large mass of water.
However, to regrade it as one ocean is to ignore currents, life, and oceanography. The properties of the Andaman Sea are different than, say, Hudson Bay.
Its like continents. We say there are seven continents because of the uniqueness of each landmass even though it can be argued there are only 4 (America, Eurasia-Africa, Australia, Antarctica). We separate them because of the variety of human and physical traits in each one.
Since the experts agree that there should be another Ocean – the Southern Ocean then we should accept and put them to practise.
I believe in the future such decisions should allow influential bodies such as National Geographic to have their input in order to have a consensus result.
I believe as Geographers we should try to differentiate things where necessary to make it easy to understand and transfer.Thus the over-70% of Earth’s water content shouldn’t restrict its subdivision since we have varying climate and topography.
No Southern Ocean ???
Yet the Mediterrean Sea contains 7 other seas !!!!