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Earth has 1.3 billion cubic kilometers, to be exact.

Ninety-seven percent of all water on Earth is found in the ocean.

The first real investigation of the oceans wasn’t organized until 1872. That was the year the British sent a former warship called HMS Challenger to explore the seas. Challenger and her crew spent three and a half years traversing the world’s oceans.

They collected marine organisms and made measurements as they went. Their research culminated in a huge 50-volume report and a new area of science: oceanography.

Otis Barton and William Beebe were interested in what you might find at the bottom of the deepest ocean. To get themselves down that far, they built a tiny iron submarine called a bathysphere.

In 1930, they set a world record by descending 183 meters into the ocean depths. By 1934, they had used the craft to dive more than 900 meters.

We have more detailed maps of the planet Mars than we do of the seabeds on Earth. According to one estimate, we may have only investigated a millionth – or even just a billionth – of the ocean