Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is a huge body of water second only to the pacific Ocean in size. The Atlantic furnishes fine trade routes and fishing grounds for four continents Nort America, South America, Europe, and Africa. It was the first ocean to be crossed by ships and airplanes.

The Atlantic ocean may have been named for the mythical land of Atlantis. According to legend, Atlantis was suddenly swallowed up by the sea and disappeared ages ago. Another legend names the ocean for the Atlantides. These water nymphs were the daughters of Atlas. Their home was the Atlantic Ocean beyond the Atlas mountains.

The Atlantic Ocean has an average depth of about 12,800 feet (3,900 meters). Its bottom is covered mainly with an ooze made up of the shells of tiny ocean animals. The deepest place is in the North Atlantic, north of Puerto Rico. Here in the Puerto Rico Trench, the ocean reaches down 27,510 feet (8,385 m).
The ocean bed of Atlantic isi divided into two valleys by the mid-Atlantic ridge. This is an S-shaped ridge running from north to south and rising about 6,000 feet (1,830 m) from the ocean bottom. Where the ridge rises above sea level, it forms the island of Azores, Saint Payl Rocks, Ascension, Saint Helena, Tristan da Cunha, and Bouvet.
Compares to the fairly straight coast of the South Atlantic, the North Atlantic has a very irregular shoreline. The greatest indentations are on the European side of the ocean. These are formed by the Baltic, Nort, Mediterranean, and Black seas. The coastal waters on the American side include Hudson Bay, the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea. Water from most of the great river systems of the world flows into the Atlantic. These rivers the Saint Lawrence, Mississippi, Orinoco, Amazon, La Plata, Congo, Niger, Nile, Don, Dnieper, Danube, Po, Loire, Rhine, and Elbe give the Atlantic the largest drainage area of any ocean. Such drainage, from about half of the world’s land area, includes many dissolved minerals and makes the Atlantic the saltiest of the ocean.