1. ocean* -- a great expanse of salt water. I put this picture in here because it seemed to me that an ocean would be obvious, and anyone can see a nice ocean picture from space, as some are found later on this pages. I just liked this wave as it reminded me of body-surfing on Huntington Beach, CA., when I was younger. The oceans occupy 71% of the surface of the planet and there is a great diversity of animal life that can be found in the oceans and nowhere else. While many think of the oceans in a horizontal manner, such as the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, and Arctic Oceans, there is a vertical manner in which the oceans are described. These include the photic (region to which photosynthetic sunlight can penetrate ... about 200 meters) and the aphotic zone where no plants exist. There littoral zone out to the continental shelf, the benthic zone beyond the shelf. is the benthic zone. Deeper and deeper zones go from the epipelagic zone (free-swimming animals in the open ocean) down to the abyssalpelagic zone (free-swimming and bottom-dwelling animals in the depths ofthe ocean bottom) The hadal zone is which are found in deep ocean trenches formed by the geologic process of subduction). Of great interest in the depth of the oceans are the strange lifeforms and geothermal vents which continue to be newly discovered and described.