Pacific Ocean Multiple Choice Questions
1. The largest part of our hydrosphere is
A. Antarctica ocean
B. Pacific ocean
C. Indian Ocean
D. Atlantic Ocean
Answer: Pacific ocean
2. Which of the following oceans holds almost 50% of total water on the planet?
A. Arctic Ocean
B. Indian Ocean
C. Atlantic Ocean
D. Pacific Ocean
Answer: Pacific Ocean
3. Which of the following oceans has the most trenches or deeps?
A. Pacific Ocean
B. Arctic Ocean
C. Indian Ocean
D. Atlantic Ocean
Answer: Pacific Ocean
4. Which of the following oceans has the most coral reefs?
A. Indian Ocean
B. Pacific Ocean
C. Atlantic Ocean
D. Arctic Ocean
Answer: Pacific Ocean
5. Where is the deepest part of worlds ocean located?
A. Pacific Ocean
B. Indian Ocean
C. Atlantic Ocean
D. Arctic Ocean
Answer: Pacific Ocean
6. Which one of the following pairs of oceans and currents is not correctly matched?
A. Indian Ocean : Agulhas current
B. South Atlantic Ocean : Falkland current
C. Eastern Pacific Ocean : Kuroshio current
D. North Atlantic Ocean : Canaries current
Answer: Eastern Pacific Ocean : Kuroshio current
7. What is the Pacific Ocean?
Answer: The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth’s oceanic divisions.
8. How large in square miles is the Pacific Ocean?
Answer: 63,800,000 square miles (165,250,000 square kilometers).
9. This covers how much of the Earth’s water surface?
Answer: About 46%.
10. It covers about one-third of the Earth’s total surface area, making it larger than what?
Answer: All of Earth’s land area combined.
12. The centers of both the Water Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere are where?
Answer: In the Pacific Ocean.
13. The equator subdivides it into what?
Answer: The North Pacific Ocean and South Pacific Ocean, with two exceptions: the Galápagos and Gilbert Islands, while straddling the equator, are deemed wholly within the South Pacific.
14. What is the Pacific Oceans mean depth?
Answer: It is 13,000 feet (4,000 meters).
15. The Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific is the deepest point in the world, reaching what depth?
Answer: 35,797 feet (10,911 meters).
16. When was the eastern Pacific first sighted by Europeans?
Answer: In the early 16th century when Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1513 and discovered the great “southern sea” which he named Mar del Sur (in Spanish).
17. The ocean’s current name was coined by whom?
Answer: Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the Spanish circumnavigation of the world in 1521, as he encountered favorable winds on reaching the ocean.
18. He called it Mar Pacífico, which in both Portuguese and Spanish means what?
Answer: “Peaceful sea”.
19. The east side of the ocean was discovered by whom?
Answer: Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513 after his expedition crossed the Isthmus of Panama and reached a new ocean.
20. Why did he name it Mar del Sur (literally, “Sea of the South” or “South Sea”?
Answer: Because the ocean was to the south of the coast of the isthmus where he first observed the Pacific.
21. In 1519, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed the Pacific East to West on a Spanish expedition to the Spice Islands that would eventually result in what?
Answer: The first world circumnavigation.
22. Why did Magellan call the ocean Pacífico (or “Pacific” meaning, “peaceful”)?
Answer: Because, after sailing through the stormy seas off Cape Horn, the expedition found calm waters.
23. The ocean was often called the Sea of Magellan in his honor until when?
Answer: Until the eighteenth century.
24. Magellan died in the Philippines in 1521, but Spanish Basque navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano led the remains of the expedition back to Spain, completing the first what?
Answer: World circumnavigation in a single expedition in 1522.
25. Sailing around and east of the Moluccas, between 1525 and 1527, Portuguese expeditions discovered what?
Answer: The Caroline Islands, the Aru Islands, and Papua New Guinea.
26. In 1542–43 the Portuguese also reached what country?
Answer: Japan.
27. The Pacific separates Asia and Australia from what?
Answer: The Americas.
28. It may be further subdivided by the equator into what?
Answer: Northern (North Pacific) and southern (South Pacific) portions.
29. It extends from the Antarctic region in the South to where?
Answer: The Arctic in the north.
30. The Pacific Ocean encompasses approximately how much of the Earth’s surface?
Answer: One-third.
31. The lowest known point on Earth, the Mariana Trench, lies how far below sea level?
Answer: 35,797 ft; (10,911 m).
32. What is its average depth?
Answer: 14,040 ft; (4,280 m).
33. What is the total water volume?
Answer: Roughly 710,000,000 km3 (170,000,000 cu mi).
34. Due to the effects of plate tectonics, the Pacific Ocean is currently doing what?
Answer: Shrinking by roughly 2.5 cm (1 in) per year on three sides, roughly averaging 0.52 km2 (0.20 sq mi) a year.
35. What is the Atlantic Ocean doing?
Answer: It’s increasing in size.