How many seas on Earth? Is it even possible to answer this question at all?

Speaking of the seas, it is necessary to cover the entire hydrosphere as a whole, because water is something without which life on earth is not simply impossible, it would not even have arisen on our planet.

Where did the water come from?

Scientists have not yet come to an unequivocal opinion as to where the water came from on earth. But the most popular and realistic today is the hypothesis that the Earth once fell an asteroid, consisting entirely of ice. This version looks quite scientific, since in the distant past our planet was repeatedly subjected to impacts of meteorites and asteroids. It is likely that some of them contained water in the form of ice or a snow-like substance.

Another group of scientists believes that at first the Earth itself was like a cold meteorite. In the process of melting ice as a result of increasing solar activity and changing the slope of the earth's axis, seas and oceans began to appear. And since the Sun heats the planet unevenly, the cycle of water in nature began.

But there are also those who believe that the Earth, on the contrary, was at first like a red-hot ball. Then, when the surface of the planet began to cool, the water stood out from under the mantle, like sweat. But all these theories still do not give an answer to the question of how many seas on Earth.

Our planet is unique. It has the largest mass of all similar, in addition, the only known planets on which there is life. It was formed more than 5 billion years ago, pulling to itself the moon, which became the first and only companion. The seas and oceans of the Earth depend on the lunar cycle. This dependence is visible on the example of tides.

On the question of how many seas on the Earth, in textbooks write a figure from 76 to 83. There are even data that they are only 49, or even 100. If you think about it, it's a lot. But in comparison with the total amount of water on Earth, even with the amount of land - and 76, and 83 of the sea - is negligible. The scatter in numbers is obtained because everyone treats this concept differently. Some consider the seas only the coastal part of the ocean. But in that case, what to do with the inner seas? And with inter-island everything is generally not clear. In addition, many of the seas are now called bays. So a reservoir is not called by hydrogeographic demarcation, but by tradition. For example, everyone knows about the Caspian Sea, although the sea is a huge lake with salt bitter water is not.

What kinds of seas are divided?

• The interstitial . They are often not considered a total number of seas, because they are located between islands, and not in the coastal zone of the ocean. These include the Fiji Sea, the Javanese, the New Guinea.

• Inland seas . As the name implies, they go deep into the land and are connected with the ocean by straits. In this respect, the Azov Sea near the Crimean peninsula is unique. With the ocean it is connected not only by straits, but also by other seas - the Black and the Mediterranean, which also belong to the category of inland seas. The Mediterranean Sea connects with the Atlantic Ocean through the Strait of Gibraltar, the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov through the Kerch Strait.
• Semi-closed . These are the seas separated from the ocean by the continent. These include: Yellow, Arabian, Aegean, East China, Coral, Andaman, Okhotsk, Caribbean, Japan, Adriatic, South China Sea and the Sea of Baffin.
• Outskirts . They are well communicated with the ocean, since they are located just in the coastal continental zone. These include the seas of Ross, Weddell, Laptev, Arafur, Bellingshausen, Timor, Chudskoe, Norwegian, Northern, Chukchi, Labrador, Greenland, Kara, East Siberian.

How many seas on the planet are called open? Not so much. These include Sargasso, Ionian, Tyrrhenian.

And is everything taken into account?

Such a classification, of course, helps to systematize the water expanses, but complicates the answer to the question of how many seas on the planet Earth. Scientists do not always agree with this division. As a result, outside the attention of researchers are those outlying, then open seas, which, in fact, do not have shores. The most famous is the Sargasso Sea, which is completely composed of algae.

Garbage Seas

At the moment, in connection with the general deterioration of the planet's ecology, the question: "How many seas on Earth?" Requires a decisive revision. For example, scientists distinguish three more, however, they do not consist of water, but of garbage. So, in the Indian and Pacific oceans, entire floating continents of plastic and polyethylene wander. Expanding under the influence of the sun and water, all this floating garbage releases into the waters of the world ocean the products of chemical reactions of plastic.

They disappear!

But one more problem is the disappearance of water resources. For example, once the huge Aral Lake practically disappeared due to human economic activity. Because of the large water intake from the donor rivers, fresh water has stopped flowing into the Aral Lake . As a result, the fauna inhabiting this sea-lake almost completely disappeared.

All of the above shows that the answer to the question of how many seas on Earth is yet to be given.