Happy World Ocean Day!
In an ideal world, I’d have had a lovely day by the sea to share with you but I live in an entirely landlocked county so seaside adventures are difficult to come by on random Thursdays in term time.
As it is, I decided I was going to find out five new-to-me facts about the oceans and share them with you guys as my 30DW activity for the day. But then I accidentally did two other things as well so you get a bumper post!
We’ll start with the ocean facts, and then I’ll share the rest.
1. The place in the ocean that is furthest from any land is named after a book character.
Point Nemo in the Pacific Ocean is about 1,670 miles from land and is named after a character in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne.
2. The ocean contains more artefacts than every single museum in the world combined.
Coz pretty much everything sinks, including the boats we use to transport stuff. Makes sense when you look at it that way. If there are three million plus shipwrecks down there, there’s going to be treasure, too!
3. Sea Ice is drinkable!
Weirdly, whilst you can’t drink sea water (I mean, you can, but you shouldn’t), you can safely melt and drink sea ice.
You want to find yourself some nicely aged sea ice to melt down though, because freshly frozen stuff might still have pockets of brine trapped between the forming ice crystals. Once there’s been enough time for that brine to drain away, sea ice becomes fresh enough to consume… just, maybe don’t think about all the animals that might have, er, done their business on it in the time it spent ‘aging’.
Yeah. Maybe not.
4. The Pacific Ocean is wider than the moon.
This one broke my brain a bit, because I always forget that the moon isn’t actually that big in comparison to Earth. I think I just sort of assume they’re the same size, and it just looks small because it is far away.
However the widest point of the Pacific (from Colombia all the way across to Indonesia) is about 12,300 miles, which is more than FIVE TIMES the diameter of the moon.
5. The Indian Ocean is the warmest ocean in the world.
Conveniently not connected to the Arctic Ocean, the Indian Ocean maintains a pretty warm temperature all year round – with the surface temperature staying in the range between 19 and 30 degrees Celsius (66-82 Fahrenheit, if that’s how you work) – which is pretty toasty for an ocean!!
And now onto the two less planned Wild moments of the day.
Firstly, walking to Tori’s orthodontist appointment we discovered a random nettle that was as big as she is!
And secondly, on our way back from the appointment I spotted a tiny bluest fledgeling grounded in the middle of a narrow bit of road. I thought it was a leaf at first and very nearly squished it, but I realised in time to swerve (safely) round it. Luckily the car behind me was paying attention and avoided it, too.
I pulled over in a lay-by that was a few meters further down the road and we walked back up to move it somewhere a little less dangerous. I didn’t want to move it far – Mum and Dad were probably very close by – but I couldn’t leave the little floof where it was because it was destined to become flat-packed.
It let me scoop it up and I moved it to the safety of some flowers a couple of metres up a wide driveway to the side of the road – hopefully a bit too far for it to bother going back to the road, but still close enough for its parents to spot it from where it was before.
I am always startled by how light birds are, especially the babies. If it wasn’t for the spiky little claws gripping my finger, I’d barely know it was there! It was about the size of my old pet gerbils, and yet probably less than half their weight – those hollow bones definitely make a difference!
Fingers crossed the little grumpy baby (who we named Bibbi Birb) stayed where we left him and was cheered up by one of his parents bringing him something tasty, like a caterpillar, to make up for the disgruntlement of almost being run over twice, and then picked up by a gentle giant calling it silly names.
‘if
Nayyirah Waheed
the ocean
can calm itself,
so can you.
we
are both
salt water
mixed with
air.’
What random act of wildness have you done today? Did you get to see the sea on this World Ocean Day??
Carole Finds Her Wings 