An interactive atlas in four volumes

The Ocean

What everyone should know

Dear reader

We name the ocean with an almost innocent familiarity, as if it were only the great blue patch on the map. Yet it is a door we have spent centuries not daring to cross completely. A whole world, vast and delicate, where the planet's first story was written. It shaped continents, set currents in motion and sustains the life we breathe without thinking. We feared it, sailed it, plundered it, turned it into frontier, route, fishing ground and dump. Still, we remain bound to its pulse. In its immensity lies our origin, in its fragility our responsibility, and in its strength the great opportunity we have not yet dared to face. On the other side of this blue door there is no void. There is a whole world that holds us up.

Contents

The Human Ocean

4 billion years of water and 5,000 years of seafaring.

18 subsections

The Physical & Chemical Ocean

How the ocean moves, stores heat and changes chemistry.

16 subsections

The Living Ocean

From plankton to blue corridors and coastal guardians.

18 subsections

The Ocean Economy

Value, pressures and the shift from extraction to regeneration.

18 subsections

Three numbers to begin

71%

of Earth's surface is ocean.

91%

of the excess heat from global warming is stored in the ocean.

IPCC AR6

~25%

of yearly human CO2 emissions is absorbed by the ocean.

Global Carbon Project