Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south and is bounded by Asia and Australia in the west and the Americas in the east. At 165,250,000 square kilometers in area, this largest division of the World Ocean—and, in turn, the hydrosphere—covers about 46% of Earth's water surface and about one-third of its total surface area, making it larger than all of Earth's land area combined; the centers of both the Water Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere are in the Pacific Ocean. The equator subdivides it into the North Pacific Ocean and South Pacific Ocean, with two exceptions: the Galápagos and Gilbert Islands, while straddling the equator, are deemed wholly within the South Pacific, its mean depth is 4,000 meters. The Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific is the deepest point in the world, reaching a depth of 10,911 meters; the western Pacific has many peripheral seas. Though the peoples of Asia and Oceania have traveled the Pacific Ocean since prehistoric times, the eastern Pacific was first sighted by Europeans in the early 16th century when Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1513 and discovered the great "southern sea" which he named Mar del Sur.
The ocean's current name was coined by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the Spanish circumnavigation of the world in 1521, as he encountered favorable winds on reaching the ocean. He called it Mar Pacífico, which in both Portuguese and Spanish means "peaceful sea". Important human migrations occurred in the Pacific in prehistoric times. About 3000 BC, the Austronesian peoples on the island of Taiwan mastered the art of long-distance canoe travel and spread themselves and their languages south to the Philippines and maritime Southeast Asia. Long-distance trade developed all along the coast from Mozambique to Japan. Trade, therefore knowledge, extended to the Indonesian islands but not Australia. By at least 878 when there was a significant Islamic settlement in Canton much of this trade was controlled by Arabs or Muslims. In 219 BC Xu Fu sailed out into the Pacific searching for the elixir of immortality. From 1404 to 1433 Zheng He led expeditions into the Indian Ocean; the first contact of European navigators with the western edge of the Pacific Ocean was made by the Portuguese expeditions of António de Abreu and Francisco Serrão, via the Lesser Sunda Islands, to the Maluku Islands, in 1512, with Jorge Álvares's expedition to southern China in 1513, both ordered by Afonso de Albuquerque from Malacca.
The east side of the ocean was discovered by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513 after his expedition crossed the Isthmus of Panama and reached a new ocean. He named it Mar del Sur because the ocean was to the south of the coast of the isthmus where he first observed the Pacific. In 1519, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed the Pacific East to West on a Spanish expedition to the Spice Islands that would result in the first world circumnavigation. Magellan called the ocean Pacífico because, after sailing through the stormy seas off Cape Horn, the expedition found calm waters; the ocean was called the Sea of Magellan in his honor until the eighteenth century. Although Magellan himself died in the Philippines in 1521, Spanish Basque navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano led the remains of the expedition back to Spain across the Indian Ocean and round the Cape of Good Hope, completing the first world circumnavigation in a single expedition in 1522. Sailing around and east of the Moluccas, between 1525 and 1527, Portuguese expeditions discovered the Caroline Islands, the Aru Islands, Papua New Guinea.
In 1542–43 the Portuguese reached Japan. In 1564, five Spanish ships carrying 379 explorers crossed the ocean from Mexico led by Miguel López de Legazpi, sailed to the Philippines and Mariana Islands. For the remainder of the 16th century, Spanish influence was paramount, with ships sailing from Mexico and Peru across the Pacific Ocean to the Philippines via Guam, establishing the Spanish East Indies; the Manila galleons operated for two and a half centuries, linking Manila and Acapulco, in one of the longest trade routes in history. Spanish expeditions discovered Tuvalu, the Marquesas, the Cook Islands, the Solomon Islands, the Admiralty Islands in the South Pacific. In the quest for Terra Australis, Spanish explorations in the 17th century, such as the expedition led by the Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, discovered the Pitcairn and Vanuatu archipelagos, sailed the Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea, named after navigator Luís Vaz de Torres. Dutch explorers, sailing around southern Africa engaged in discovery and trade.
In the 16th and 17th centuries Spain considered the Pacific Ocean a mare clausum—a sea closed to other naval powers. As the only known entrance from the Atlantic, the Strait of Magellan was at times patrolled by fleets sent to prevent entrance of non-Spanish ships. On the western side of the Pacific Ocean the Dutch threatened the Spanish Philippines; the 18th cen
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an Oceanian country that occupies the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and its offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean north of Australia. Its capital, located along its southeastern coast, is Port Moresby; the western half of New Guinea forms the Indonesian provinces of West Papua. At the national level, after being ruled by three external powers since 1884, Papua New Guinea established its sovereignty in 1975; this followed nearly 60 years of Australian administration, which started during World War I. It became an independent Commonwealth realm in 1975 with Elizabeth II as its queen, it became a member of the Commonwealth of Nations in its own right. Papua New Guinea is one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world, it is one of the most rural, as only 18 per cent of its people live in urban centres. There are 851 known languages in the country. Most of the population of more than 8 million people lives in customary communities, which are as diverse as the languages.
The country is one of the world's least explored and geographically. It is known to have numerous groups of uncontacted peoples, researchers believe there are many undiscovered species of plants and animals in the interior. Papua New Guinea is classified as a developing economy by the International Monetary Fund. Strong growth in Papua New Guinea's mining and resource sector led to the country becoming the sixth-fastest-growing economy in the world in 2011. Growth was expected to slow once major resource projects came on line in 2015. Mining remains a major economic factor, however. Local and national governments are discussing the potential of resuming mining operations at the Panguna mine in Bougainville Province, closed since the civil war in the 1980s–1990s. Nearly 40 per cent of the population lives a self-sustainable natural lifestyle with no access to global capital. Most of the people still live in strong traditional social groups based on farming, their social lives combine traditional religion including primary education.
These societies and clans are explicitly acknowledged by the Papua New Guinea Constitution, which expresses the wish for "traditional villages and communities to remain as viable units of Papua New Guinean society" and protects their continuing importance to local and national community life. The nation is an observer state in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN since 1976, has filed its application for full membership status, it is the Commonwealth of Nations. Archaeological evidence indicates that humans first arrived in Papua New Guinea around 42,000 to 45,000 years ago, they were descendants of migrants out of Africa, in one of the early waves of human migration. Agriculture was independently developed in the New Guinea highlands around 7000 BC, making it one of the few areas in the world where people independently domesticated plants. A major migration of Austronesian-speaking peoples to coastal regions of New Guinea took place around 500 BC; this has been correlated with the introduction of pottery and certain fishing techniques.
In the 18th century, traders brought the sweet potato to New Guinea, where it was adopted and became part of the staples. Portuguese traders had introduced it to the Moluccas; the far higher crop yields from sweet potato gardens radically transformed traditional agriculture and societies. Sweet potato supplanted the previous staple and resulted in a significant increase in population in the highlands. Although by the late 20th century headhunting and cannibalism had been eradicated, in the past they were practised in many parts of the country as part of rituals related to warfare and taking in enemy spirits or powers. In 1901, on Goaribari Island in the Gulf of Papua, missionary Harry Dauncey found 10,000 skulls in the island's long houses, a demonstration of past practices. According to Marianna Torgovnick, writing in 1991, "The most documented instances of cannibalism as a social institution come from New Guinea, where head-hunting and ritual cannibalism survived, in certain isolated areas, into the Fifties and Seventies, still leave traces within certain social groups."Little was known in Europe about the island until the 19th century, although Portuguese and Spanish explorers, such as Dom Jorge de Menezes and Yñigo Ortiz de Retez, had encountered it as early as the 16th century.
Traders from Southeast Asia had visited New Guinea beginning 5,000 years ago to collect bird-of-paradise plumes. The country's dual name results from its complex administrative history before independence; the word papua is derived from an old local term of uncertain origin. "New Guinea" was the name coined by the Spanish explorer Yñigo Ortiz de Retez. In 1545, he noted the resemblance of the people to those he had earlier seen along the Guinea coast of Africa. Guinea, in its turn, is etymologically derived from the Portuguese word Guiné; the name is one of several toponyms sharing similar etymologies meaning "land of the blacks" or similar meanings, in reference to the dark skin of the inhabitants. In the nineteenth century, Germany ruled the northern half of the country for some decades, beginning in 1884, as a colony named German New Guinea. In 1914 after the outbreak of World War I, Australian forces landed and captured German New Guinea in a small military campaign and occupied it throughout the war.
After the war, in which Germany and the Central Pow
Megabat
Megabats constitute the family Pteropodidae of the order Chiroptera. They are called fruit bats, Old World fruit bats, or the genera Acerodon and Pteropus, flying foxes. Megabats are found in tropical and subtropical areas of Eurasia and Oceania. Compared to insectivorous bats, fruit bats are large, with some exceptions, do not navigate by echolocation, they rely on their keen senses of sight and smell to locate food. The family Pteropodidae was first described in 1821 by British zoologist John Edward Gray. Gray placed it within the now-defunct order Fructivorae. However, Gray's spelling was based on a misunderstanding of the suffix of "Pteropus", was subsequently changed to "Pteropididae"; the Greek word pous of Pteropus is from the stem word pod-. French biologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte was the first to use the corrected spelling Pteropodidae in 1838; as of 2011, there were 186 species of megabat. In 1875, Irish zoologist George Edward Dobson was the first to split the order Chiroptera into two suborders: Megachiroptera and Microchiroptera, which are abbreviated to megabats and microbats.
Dobson selected these names to allude to the body size differences of these two groups, with many fruit-eating bats larger than insect-eating bats. Pteropodidae was the only family. A 2001 study by Springer et al. found that the dichotomy of megabats and microbats did not reflect their evolutionary lineages, however. Instead of Megachiroptera and Microchiroptera, they proposed the new suborders Yinpterochiroptera and Yangochiroptera. Yinpterochiroptera contained species included in Megachiroptera, as well as several families included in Microchiroptera: Megadermatidae, Nycteridae and Rhinopomatidae. Two superfamilies comprise Yinpterochiroptera: Rhinolophoidea—containing the above families in Microchiroptera—and Pteropodoidea, which only contains Pteropodidae. In 1917, Danish mammalogist Knud Andersen divided Pteropodidae into three subfamilies: Macroglossinae and Harpyionycterinae. However, a 1995 study found that Macroglossinae as defined was paraphyletic, meaning that the subfamily did not group all of the descendants of a common ancestor.
Subsequent publications consider Macroglossini as a tribe within Pteropodinae that contains only Macroglossus and Syconycteris. Eonycteris and Melonycteris are within other tribes in Pteropodinae, Megaloglossus was placed in Rousettinae:Myonycterini, Notopteris is of uncertain placement. Other subfamilies and tribes within Pteropodidae have undergone changes recently. In 1997, Bergmans et al. classified the Pteropodids into 6 subfamilies and 9 tribes based on their morphology, or physical characteristics: Subfamily Pteropodinae Tribe Pteropodini Tribe Macroglossini Tribe Notopterini Subfamily Nyctimeninae Subfamily Harpyionyterinae Subfamily Rousettinae Tribe Rousettini Tribe Dobsoniini Subfamily Epomophorinae Tribe Epomophorini Tribe Myonycterini Tribe Scotonycterini Tribe Plerotini Subfamily CynopterinaeA 2011 DNA study concluded that not all of these subfamilies were clades, or consisting of all the descendants of a common ancestor, therefore they did not depict the relationships between megabat species.
Three of Bergmans's subfamilies received support: Cynopterinae, Harpyionycterinae, Nyctimeninae. The three other clades recovered in this study consisted of Macroglossini, Epomophorinae + Rousettini, Pteropodini + Melonycteris. A 2016 DNA study focused only on African Pteropodids challenged the 1997 Bergmans classification. All species included in Epomophorinae were moved to Rousettinae, subdivided into additional tribes; the genus Eidolon in the tribe Rousettini of Rousettinae, was moved to its own subfamily, Eidolinae. With these changes, the internal relationships of Pteropodidae are as follows: Subfamily Pteropodinae Tribe Pteropodini Tribe Macroglossini Tribe Notopterini Subfamily Nyctimeninae Subfamily Harpyionyterinae Subfamily Rousettinae Tribe Rousettini (revised—now only includes Rousettus. However, in 2018 the fossils were reexamined and determined to represent a kind of lemur. Megabats are so called for their larger weight and size, weighing up to one kilogram with wingspans reaching over one meter in length.
The tails are short if present, but are effectively absent. The digestive system is structured to a herbivorous diet, sometimes restricted to soft fruit or nectar, is shorter than those of the insectivorous microchiropterans; the tendency while resting amongst this group is to hang by the rear limb with the wings cloaking the body and its head facing forward. The length of the digestive system is short for a herbivore, as the fibrous content is separated by the action of the palate and teeth and discarded; the ingested plant material is nectar and pollen, the small seeds that are
New Guinea
New Guinea is a large island separated by a shallow sea from the rest of the Australian continent. It is the world's third-largest island, after Australia and Greenland, covering a land area of 785,753 km2, arguably the largest wholly or within the Southern Hemisphere and Oceania; the eastern half of the island is the major land mass of the independent state of Papua New Guinea. The western half, referred to as either Western New Guinea or West Papua, has been administered by Indonesia since 1963 and comprises the provinces of Papua and West Papua; the island has been known by various names: The name Papua was used to refer to parts of the island before contact with the West. Its etymology is unclear; the name came from papo and ua, which means "not united" or, "territory that geographically is far away". Ploeg reports that the word papua is said to derive from the Malay word papua or pua-pua, meaning "frizzly-haired", referring to the curly hair of the inhabitants of these areas. Another possibility, put forward by Sollewijn Gelpke in 1993, is that it comes from the Biak phrase sup i papwa which means'the land below' and refers to the islands west of the Bird's Head, as far as Halmahera.
Whatever its origin, the name Papua came to be associated with this area, more with Halmahera, known to the Portuguese by this name during the era of their colonization in this part of the world. When the Portuguese and Spanish explorers arrived in the island via the Spice Islands, they referred to the island as Papua. However, the name New Guinea was used by Westerners starting with the Spanish explorer Yñigo Ortiz de Retez in 1545, referring to the similarities of the indigenous people's appearance with the natives of the Guinea region of Africa; the name is one of several toponyms sharing similar etymologies meaning "land of the blacks" or similar meanings, in reference to the dark skin of the inhabitants. The Dutch, who arrived under Jacob Le Maire and Willem Schouten, called it Schouten island, but this name was used only to refer to islands off the north coast of Papua proper, the Schouten Islands or Biak Island; when the Dutch colonized it as part of Netherlands East Indies, they called it Nieuw Guinea.
The name Irian was used in the Indonesian language to refer to the island and Indonesian province, as "Irian Jaya Province". The name was promoted in 1945 by brother of the future governor Frans Kaisiepo, it is taken from the Biak language of Biak Island, means "to rise", or "rising spirit". Irian is the name used in the Biak language and other languages such as Serui and Waropen; the name was used until 2001, when the name Papua was again used for the province. The name Irian, favored by natives, is now considered to be a name imposed by the authority of Jakarta. New Guinea is an island to the north of the Australian mainland, but south of the equator, it is isolated by the Arafura Sea to the west, the Torres Strait and Coral Sea to the east. Sometimes considered to be the easternmost island of the Indonesian archipelago, it lies north of Australia's Top End, the Gulf of Carpentaria and Cape York peninsula, west of the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands Archipelago. Politically, the western half of the island comprises two provinces of Indonesia: Papua and West Papua.
The eastern half forms the mainland of the country of Papua New Guinea. The shape of New Guinea is compared to that of a bird-of-paradise, this results in the usual names for the two extremes of the island: the Bird's Head Peninsula in the northwest, the Bird's Tail Peninsula in the southeast. A spine of east–west mountains, the New Guinea Highlands, dominates the geography of New Guinea, stretching over 1,600 km from the'head' to the'tail' of the island, with many high mountains over 4,000 m; the western-half of the island of New Guinea contains the highest mountains in Oceania, rising up to 4,884 m high, higher than Mont Blanc in Europe, ensuring a steady supply of rain from the equatorial atmosphere. The tree line is around 4,000 m elevation and the tallest peaks contain permanent equatorial glaciers—which have been retreating since at least 1936. Various other smaller mountain ranges occur both west of the central ranges. Except in high elevations, most areas possess a warm humid climate throughout the year, with some seasonal variation associated with the northeast monsoon season.
The highest peaks on the island of New Guinea are: Puncak Jaya, sometimes known by its former Dutch name Carstensz Pyramid, is a mist-covered limestone mountain peak on the Indonesian side of the border. At 4,884 metres, Puncak Jaya makes New Guinea the world's fourth-highest landmass after Afro-Eurasia and Antarctica. Puncak Mandala located in Papua, is the second-highest peak on the island at 4,760 metres. Puncak Trikora in Papua, is 4,750 metres. Mount Wilhelm is the highest peak on the PNG side of the border at 4,509 metres, its granite peak is the highest point of the Bismarck Range. Mount Giluwe 4,368 metres is the second-highest summit in PNG, it is the highest volcanic peak in Oceania. Another major habitat featur
Melanesian megapode
The Melanesian megapode or Melanesian scrubfowl is a species of bird in the family Megapodiidae. It is found in the Solomon Islands, its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest and subtropical or tropical moist montane forest. First described by Gustav Hartlaub in 1867, it is a member of the scrubfowl genus Megapodius, it is black all over except a red cap. Its claws are long
Los Negros Island
Los Negros Island is the third largest of the Admiralty Islands. It is significant because it contains the main airport of Manus Province on its eastern coastline, at Momote, it is connected to Lorengau, the capital of the province, on Manus Island via a highway and bridge across the Lonui Passage, which separates Los Negros from the larger Manus Island. One of Australia's regional centres for asylum seekers caught in Australian waters, the Manus Island Regional Processing Centre, was situated on the island until it closed in November 2017. Remaining asylum seekers were as of February 2019 housed in accommodation in Lorengau. Los Negros was a Japanese base during World War II, was assaulted on February 29, 1944 by Allied forces, during the Battle of Los Negros, the spearhead for the Admiralty Islands campaign. After its capture by allied forces, Los Negros was developed over the spring and summer of 1944 into an important air and sea base, used by allied forces until September 1945. Allied development included the creation of an advanced naval base at Seeadler Harbor, a seaplane base at Lombrum Point and an extended airfield to accommodate heavy aircraft built at Mokerang Plantation.
The Australian War Crimes Court held a series of trials of accused war criminals at Los Negros between June 1950 and April 1951
Jean-Michel Cousteau
Jean-Michel Cousteau is a French oceanographic explorer, environmentalist and film producer. The first son of ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, he is the father of Fabien Cousteau and Céline Cousteau. Cousteau is the son of Simone Melchior. Cousteau first dived with an aqua-lung in 1945. Although he went to school to study architecture, he joined his father's Cousteau Society, serving for twenty years as executive vice president before striking out on his own in 1993 to produce environmental films. Cousteau and his father disagreed on the management and policies of the Society. After Cousteau opened a resort on a Fiji Island utilizing the family name, Jacques-Yves Cousteau filed a lawsuit against him in 1996. In June 1996, a court signed an injunction requiring him to add, with equal prominence in placement, his first name to the hotel. Jean-Michel founded the Ocean Futures Society in 1999, a marine conservation and education organization. In 2003, Francesca Sorrenti and Marisha Shibuya of the SKe GROUP project, in partnership with Jean-Michel Cousteau's Ocean Futures Society, collaborated to produce Water Culture, a Trolley Books publication featuring a wide variety of photographer's water-related imagery and interviews with prominent world personalities on the problems facing our water supply.
Cousteau is Chairman of Green Cross France. Cousteau advocates for a world free of nuclear weapons, is a member of the Advisory Council of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Cousteau is working on a documentary highlighting the epic and disastrous 2010 Gulf Oil Spill in which 11 workers were killed during an explosion of deepwater rig 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana. In 2012, he published the book The Captain: My Life with Jacques Cousteau. Jean-Michel Cousteau is the President of Green Cross France & Territoires, a NGO proposing keys for actions towards a better environment for an unburden future, he has produced over 70 films. He appears in the 2003 IMAX documentary film Coral Reef Adventure, he appeared on a documentary-type special feature on the DVD version of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie in which he and Stephen Hillenburg talk about all of the real-life counterparts to the sea creatures seen in the cartoon series and movie. He did a similar feature for the DVD of the Disney/Pixar movie Finding Nemo.
In Disney's DVD release of Finding Nemo, Cousteau makes an appearance interacting with the characters from the film, Marlin and Dory, touting the need for better pollution control, showing videos of polluted coral reefs. Jean-Michel Cousteau made a new documentary series Ocean Adventures released in 2006. Cousteau's Ocean Futures Society, KQED and PBS are continuing production on the Ocean Adventures series for 2007 and 2008. In October 2006, Jean-Michel Cousteau, an expedition team that includes his son Fabien and daughter Céline, began filming along the Amazon River. Twenty years ago scientists predicted devastation and irreversible environmental damage here, 25 years ago Jean-Michel Cousteau and his legendary father traveled with their teams the entire length of the Amazon to document and see for themselves. In 2006, Cousteau's documentary Voyage to Kure inspired U. S. President George W. Bush to protect the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, making it—with its 140,000 square miles of ocean waters and atolls—one of the largest Marine Protected Areas in the world.
Unless noted otherwise, all are appearances as himself. The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau "Search in the Deep" "Savage Worlds of the Coral Jungle" The Alan Thicke Show Les Pièges de la mer aka Cries from the Deep Cousteau: Alaska: Outrage at Valdez The Sacred Mirror of Kofun Stories of the Sea Exploring the Reef with Jean-Michel Cousteau MacGillivray Freeman's Coral Reef Adventure Hollywood's Magical Island: Catalina Deadly Sounds in the Silent World Sharks 3D Tout le monde en parle The 100 Greatest Family Films Jean-Michel Cousteau: Ocean Adventures "America's Underwater Treasures" Robert Redford "Sharks at Risk" "The Gray Whale Obstacle Course" "Voyage to Kure" "Return to the Amazon" "Sea Ghosts" "Call of the Killer Whale" Slater Meets Her Hero Jean-Micheal Cousteau Voxtours: "Karibische Jungferninseln - Die British Virgin Islands" Dolphins and Whales 3D: Tribes of the Ocean The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson Wonders of the Sea 3D Jean-Michel Cousteau on IMDb Jean-Michel Cousteau: Ocean Adventures at PBS.org Ocean Futures Public School Insights' interview with Jean-Michel Cousteau Posted April 21, 2009 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0799879/ Jean-Michel Cousteau: Ocean Adventures
. New International Encyclopedia. 1905.
