The Atlantic Ocean is the secondlargest ocean in the world, covering about 31,830,000 square miles. Including bays, gulfs, and other inland seas, the area is more than 41,000,000 square miles. Only the Pacific Ocean is larger.
The
largest continent, Asia, has about 17,000,000 square miles. The
Atlantic Ocean, particularly the North Atlantic, has borne more
traffic than any other trade route in history. A look at the map
shows that the Atlantic is shaped like the letter "S." Its
northern boundary is about at the northernmost point of the British
Isles.
It bends toward the west,
to the Grand Banks, where the ocean floor rises like a shelf off the
coast of Newfoundland and where are found the most important fishing
grounds in the world. The narrow part of the letter "S" is
where Dakar, Africa, is only about 1,800 miles from the bulge of
Brazil. Then the ocean widens once again to meet the Antarctic in the
south. The average depth of the Atlantic Ocean is about two and a
half miles. The Atlantic Ocean connects with the Pacific through the
Panama Canal and through "Drake's Passage" below South
America; and with the Indian Ocean through the Mediterranean Sea, the
Suez Canal, the Gulf of Suez, and the Red Sea.
