Asian Diver — October 2017

24

I BET YOU WEREN’T EXEPECTING THIS...

The Earth’s largest known waterfall is

underwater, between Greenland and

Iceland. The Denmark Strait cataract,

is an underwater waterfall of 5 million

cubic metres of water dropping a massive

3,505 metres! It is 3 times the height of

Angel Falls in Venezuela, and carries almost

2,000 times the amount of water of Niagara

Falls at peak flow.

1/5 of a

teaspoon

15 – 30

Jellyfish have

claimed

times more

human lives than

sharks ever have.

Acid Sea Water

PH SCALE

The ocean is now

30 %

more acidic than it was in pre-industrial

times. This is a significant increase and

requires humans to radically alter the way

we are affecting the environment.

In 1979 , the US National Oceanographic

and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

detected a repetitive, ultra-low-frequency

and extremely powerful underwater

sound coming from the bottom of the

ocean. For years, the origin of the sound,

nicknamed “The Bloop” remained a

mystery. In 2002 , NOAA determined that

The Bloop was probably ice related,

either generated by icebergs scraping the

sea floor, or by “ice-quakes”.

Denmark Strait

Iceland

Greenland

The Bloop

The oceans are full of gold! NOAA

estimates that there is around

18 million metric tonnes of it,

about 4kg for every person on Earth.

But mining this gold is physically

impossible, and would create untold

damage to the planet.

If all the ice in the Earth’s glaciers and ice sheets melted, the

sea level would rise by about 80 metres. That’s about the

height of a 26-story building. A 3-metre rise would submerge

cities like Shanghai, Mumbai, Venice, London, and New York.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Jupiter’s moon,

Europa, is an ocean

world covered in ice.

Its sea is thought to be

100 kilometres deep.

There are about

10 million viruses,

1 million bacteria,

and 1,000 protozoans

and algae per millilitre

of coastal seawater. Most are totally harmless, and

are, in fact, necessary for a healthy ocean.

DIVING BY NUMBERS