The deep blue sea

The sea! the sea! the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth's wide regions round

From The Sea
Barry Cornwall

Sailors talk about "the seven seas", but there is really only one big ocean. The lands we live on, even giant continents such as North and South America, are really just islands in the huge ocean.

Large parts of this one big ocean lie between the continents. These parts have different names. The biggest part is called the Pacific Ocean. The next biggest part is called the Atlantic Ocean. There is also the Indian Ocean near India, the Arctic Ocean around the North Pole, and the Antarctic Ocean near the South Pole.

Smaller parts of the ocean, near islands or between pieces of land, are sometimes called seas. But we also call the whole ocean a sea - the deep, blue sea.