A wondrous waterland of immense proportions and varied life, spreading over over 71% of the planet's surface. A world where the light and dark meet, where water meets the sky. Sunlight glancing off the clear, moving surface in a bright, spirited dance of happiness. A world of silence and quiet, graceful movements through the liquid air. A great diversity of life, hidden or hiding among the colourful coral reefs and dark sea floors, waiting to be discovered.

The ocean has always been a great influencing factor in the history and development of mankind and civilisation. Aside from providing fish and delicacies for food, the ocean contains a vast supply of minerals, oil and other untapped resources, which only relatively recently has Man begun to tap upon. Races have grown up by the ocean, depending on it for food and later for transport; many cultures have elements of the ocean in them, in legends, myth and religion. It is the last remaining frontier on the planet Earth, and though its surfaces have been throughly mapped, its darkest, deepest crevices and bottoms stay undisturbed by Man.

The surface of the sea is continually in motion. Swept by the wind and pulled by the moon, the surface waters are forever agitated; temperature differences and surface motion give rise to ocean currents, flows travelling on usually predictable routes. Massive amounts of water evaporate all the time as the sea is heated by the sun over a huge area; clouds mass and thicken above the sea, forming a thick wispy-white layer over the planet's surface, which can be seen from space. The ocean has a massive effect on the planet's atmosphere, since it covers so much area.

Like land, the ocean has its own underwater landscapes and formations, havens teeming with life, much like a land underwater, equalling, if not surpassing, the land's own diversity. Most of this life resides in the deepest, abyssal levels of the sea, which are so different from surface levels that the main similarity between them is their common environment of water. These dark zones have not been fully investigated even in our time, yet they are possibly the richest, most bountiful ones. The varied environmental conditions of the ocean give rise to a huge variety of life, differing greatly from habitat to habitat, many with peculiar adaptations likely to astound most people.

In this website we seek to cover certain topics of the ocean, focusing on the interaction between Man and the ocean; such topics include pollution, ocean resources and exploitation. We hope you will have an enjoyable and enlightening time perusing the information we have presented. We have also included a page of 'Factoids'-interesting facts about the ocean for your reading. Feel free to send any links you wish to the webmaster. We wish you a good time in your exploration of our site, which we have made conveniently easy to navigate.