The science that studies the lands, the features, the properties, and the phenomena of the sea.
Questions tagged [oceanography]
17 questions
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Are sharks a threat to undersea cables?
Slate published an article recently, titled The Global Internet Is Being Attacked by Sharks, Google Confirms. Despite being catchy and all, most of the references seem to be other news outlets or actually contradict the claim.
Are there any sources…
Édouard Lopez
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Has 90% of ice around Antarctica disappeared in less than a decade?
According to CNN, 90% of ice around Antarctica has disappeared in less than a decade.
In the video, CNN Climate Correspondent, Bill Weir states:
... the ice around the continent was growing. In 2014, it was about 7,000,000 square miles, but in…
DavePhD
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Are drinking straws a minor source of ocean plastic pollution?
An opinion piece in Bloomberg: Plastic Straws Aren’t the Problem claims that drinking straws are a minor source of plastic pollution in oceans:
Yet even if all those straws were suddenly washed into the sea, they'd account for about .03 percent of…
Andrew Grimm
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Is the ninth wave the largest?
This famous painting by Ivan Aivazovsky is called The Ninth Wave:
Wikipedia tells about the origin of the name:
Both English and Russian titles refer to the nautical tradition that waves grow larger and larger in a series up to the largest wave,…
Quassnoi
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Is it theoretically possible to sail from north east Russia to Pakistan in a straight line?
I found this map from this substack, World in motion:
Rohan Chabukswar and Kushal Mukherjee, a pair of researchers at the
United Technologies Research Center in Cork, plotted the route in 2018
in response to a question posed by Live Science. They…
Gandalf
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Were any billionaires onboard the Titan submersible when it imploded?
The Oceangate submersible Titan was lost in June 2023 en route to the wreckage of the Titanic. Debris has been found and the coast guard reported that the vessel catastrophically imploded, killing everyone on board.
Five people were in the…
Brady Gilg
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Is there a 2.5 mile diameter object crawling along the Pacific floor?
Sputnik News reported in 2017
An unusual object of surprising size was spotted potentially crawling
across the floor of the Pacific Ocean, some 3,000 feet below the
surface. The object has a 2.5-mile diameter and some have speculated
that it seems…
hanugm
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12
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Is the Great Barrier Reef dead after 25,000,000 years of being alive?
The New York Post published an article in 2016 titled Obituary: Great Barrier Reef (25 Million BC-2016).
The Great Barrier Reef of Australia passed away in 2016 after a long illness. It was 25 million years old.
I have a hard time even…
Anon
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Can certain sunscreen products damage coral reefs?
According to Coral.org (and many other websites):
This June, many of the world’s top coral reef scientists met at the International Coral Reef Symposium in Hawaii to discuss the challenges facing coral reefs. Sunscreen and other personal care…
JonathanReez
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Are 40% of the oceans' bacteria killed by viruses every day?
In the March 9, 2018 column of newspaper columnist Cecil Adams' column The Straight Dope, he speaks about the possible benefits of treating bacterial infections with bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, mentioning in passing their…
Robert Columbia
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Do the Mediterranean and Strait of Gilbraltar have scientifically explicable different salinities, flora and fauna?
I am curious about a phenomena (supposedly confirmed by J. Cousteau) that is said, by a Facebook page, to support some quotes in the Quran.
They say that some seas do not join and mix with each other even though they run adjacent
Barrier Between…
Omar
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8
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Did the moon's tidal effect sink the Titanic?
I came across an absurd title on MailOnline, "Did the MOON sink the Titanic? Freak tides caused icebergs to fill shipping lanes 100 years ago," where a claim is made:
The 'once-in-many-lifetimes' event brought together the Moon's closest approach…
Carlo Alterego
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Have more people been to the deep ocean on submersibles than to space on space craft?
According to this comment by Jon Copley a Marine Biologist as interviewed by
Nexus for their show "He was right: Engineer who warned Stockton Rush about OceanGate talks to Nexus",
There has never before been a deep-diving submersible that has…
Evan Carroll
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Have there been any fatalities caused by octopi?
To what extent are octopi violent towards humans? Has there been any confirmed fatalities? The source of all knowledge claims that some have the capacity to kill humans, and claims there have been documented instances of attacks but doesn't list any…
Celeritas
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Do ocean waves come in sets of 7?
I have heard the claim that "Ocean waves travel in groups of seven, and the seventh wave is the biggest of the bunch." Is this fact of fiction?
Chris
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