Pacific Ocean Leads Five Basins at 168,723,000 Square Kilometers — Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest ocean, covering 168,723,000 square kilometers of the planet’s global ocean. It spans the full north-to-south reach of the ocean and fills most of the gap between Asia and the Americas.
That puts it at 46.6 percent of the global ocean and far ahead of the Atlantic, which covers 85,133,000 square kilometers. The Pacific also holds 50.1 percent of all the water in the global ocean, according to the ranking.
Five basins, one ocean
There is technically one global ocean, a single body of water uninterrupted by land, but for maps and general reference it is divided into five basins: the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Indian, the Southern, and the Arctic. By that system, the Pacific ranks first, the Atlantic second.
The comparison is not close on size alone. The Pacific covers about 65,144,000 square miles, while the Atlantic covers about 32,870,000 square miles, leaving the Pacific at nearly twice the area.
Pacific Depth and Scale
The Pacific is also the deepest ocean on average, at 3,970 meters. Its seabed reaches 10,994 meters below the waves at the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, the lowest spot on the planet.
That scale is part of why the Pacific dominates the global ocean’s total volume, but the map also shows how much is compressed into one basin. It has a coastline of 135,663 kilometers and roughly 25,000 islands scattered across it.
Atlantic Ocean Comparison
The Atlantic runs along 111,866 kilometers of coastline and averages 3,646 meters in depth. Its deepest point, the Milwaukee Deep inside the Puerto Rico Trench, sinks to 8,380 meters.
Victor Vescovo became the first person ever to reach the Milwaukee Deep in December 2018, giving the Atlantic’s deepest point a verified human marker. For readers comparing the oceans by size, the Pacific remains the clearest outlier in the ranking: first by area, first by share of the global ocean, and first in average depth.
