What is the largest ocean on Earth?

The largest ocean on Earth is the Pacific Ocean.

The Pacific covers about 165.25 million square kilometers, making it larger than all of Earth’s land area combined. It stretches from the Arctic region in the north toward the Southern Ocean in the south, separating Asia and Australia from North and South America. It is also the deepest ocean, containing the Mariana Trench and Challenger Deep.

Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan gave the ocean its modern name in 1521, calling it Mar Pacífico, or “peaceful sea,” after encountering relatively calm waters. Earlier, Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa had sighted it from Panama and called it the South Sea.

The Pacific is home to roughly 25,000 islands and much of the volcanic and earthquake activity around the Pacific Rim. This active zone, often called the Ring of Fire, reflects intense plate-tectonic movement. A common mistake is to confuse the Pacific’s size with the Atlantic’s historical importance; the Atlantic is significant, but it is considerably smaller.