II.

Boundaries and Size

The Pacific Ocean is bounded on the east by the North and South American continents; on the north by the Bering Strait; on the west by Asia, the Malay Archipelago, and Australia; and on the south by Antarctica. In the south-east it is arbitrarily divided from the Atlantic Ocean by the Drake Passage along 68° west longitude; in the south-west, its separation from the Indian Ocean is not officially designated. Some of the major marginal seas of the Pacific are the Bering Sea, the Sea of Okhotsk, the Sea of Japan (East Sea), the East China Sea, the South China Sea (see China Sea), the Coral Sea, the Tasman Sea, the Ross Sea, and the Gulf of California. Apart from the marginal seas along its irregular western rim, it has an area of about 165 million sq km (64 million sq mi), substantially larger than the entire land surface of the globe. Its maximum length is about 15,500 km (9,600 mi) from the Bering Strait to Antarctica, and its greatest width is about 17,700 km (11,000 mi) from Panama to the Malay Peninsula. Its average depth is 4,282 m (14,049 ft). The Pacific has the greatest known depth of any of the world's oceans at 11,033 m (36,198 ft) in the Mariana Trench off Guam.