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The Spanish explorer Balboa was the first European to sight the Pacific from America in 1513 after his expedition crossed the Isthmus of Panama and reached a new ocean. [8] He named it Mar del Sur (literally, "Sea of the South" or "South Sea") because the ocean was to the south of the coast of the isthmus where he first observed the Pacific.
Captain James Cook FRS (7 November [O.S. 27 October] 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, cartographer, and naval officer famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean and to New Zealand and Australia in particular.
The history of Hawaii began with the discovery and settlement of the Hawaiian Islands by Polynesian people between 940 and 1200 AD. [1] [2]The first recorded and sustained contact with Europeans occurred by chance when British explorer James Cook sighted the islands in January 1778 during his third voyage of exploration.
Pius "Mau" Piailug (pronounced / ˈ p aɪ ə s ˈ m aʊ p iː ˈ aɪ l ə ɡ /; 1932 – 12 July 2010) was a Micronesian navigator from the Carolinian island of Satawal, best known as a teacher of traditional, non-instrument wayfinding methods for open-ocean voyaging.
1851 map of Pacific listing colonial names of individual islands. Since the beginning of the 19th century, Australia and the islands of the Pacific have been grouped by geographers into a region called Oceania. [17] [18] It is often used as a quasi-continent, with the Pacific Ocean being the defining characteristic. [19]
An emerging threat for the Pacific Ocean is the development of deep-sea mining. Deep-sea mining is aimed at extracting manganese nodules that contain minerals such as magnesium, nickel, copper, zinc and cobalt. The largest deposits of these are found in the Pacific Ocean between Mexico and Hawaii in the Clarion Clipperton fracture zone. [107]
Hawaii represents the northernmost extension of the vast Polynesian Triangle of the south and central Pacific Ocean. While traditional Hawaiian culture remains as vestiges in modern Hawaiian society, there are re-enactments of the ceremonies and traditions throughout the islands.
Another early navigator to cross the Pacific from Asia to the Americas was Francisco Gali who completed this journey in 1584. [2] In the 19th century, the first liners built specially for the transpacific ocean service were the "Empress" vessels of the Canadian Pacific Railway. After the railway reached the Pacific seaboard in 1885, the liners ...