OCEAN · OCEANS & SEAS · SOUTHERN OCEAN
Southern Ocean
The Southern Ocean covers 21,695,157 km² — the #6 largest of the 101 named ocean and sea areas. Here's its size, its neighbours and the live water conditions at its heart right now.
Boundaries & area: Marine Regions (VLIZ), IHO Sea Areas v3 — from the IHO “Limits of Oceans & Seas” (S-23). MRGID 1907.
Live from Open-Meteo Marine at -68.0°, -26.6° (the sea's representative centre). A near-real-time model estimate.
How deep is the Southern Ocean?
The IHO sea-area dataset that draws this map records each sea's name, boundary and surface area — not its depth, which varies enormously from the shallow shelf at its edges to its deepest trench. Rather than quote a single misleading number, we measure the water column directly: the live ocean currents trace its motion, and the deep-ocean layers (Argo floats and the descend-here column, coming to the Ocean canvas) read real temperature and depth as you go down.
SEE IT ON THE MAP
See the Southern Ocean coloured on the live oceans-&-seas map.