Thread: There's a new Ocean in town

For the first time in the more than 100 years that the National Geographic Society has mapped the world’s oceans, it will recognize five of them. The organization announced this week that it will recognize the Southern Ocean, a body of water that encircles Antarctica, as the world’s fifth.

“Scientists have long known there’s a distinct ecological region around Antarctica,” National Geographic Society geographer Alex Tait said in an interview. But at least in the international scientific community, there hasn’t been agreement on the name and boundary of this body of water.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) officials said the federal agency recognized the body as the fifth ocean in 1999, when the U.S. Board on Geographic Names approved the name “Southern Ocean.”

When the boundaries of the ocean were proposed in 2000 to the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO), which tracks and charts the world’s seas and oceans, not all IHO member countries were in agreement, according to NOAA.

The IHO is one of National Geographic’s main references, among other sources, for consulting on place names.

Tait said that while National Geographic has labeled the ocean on its maps before, it came with a disclaimer about the lack of broad agreement.

“But we thought it was important at this point to officially recognize it,” he said. “People look to us for geographic fact: How many continents, how many countries, how many oceans? Up until now, we’ve said four oceans.”

Now, Tait said, when National Geographic lists oceans, it will mention five: Arctic, Atlantic, Indian, Pacific and Southern.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/scien...outhern-ocean/

This calls for a celebration!