Pacific Rim

The Pacific Rim are the lands around the rim of the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific Basin includes the Pacific Rim and the islands in the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific Rim roughly overlaps with the geologic Pacific Ring of Fire.

List of countries on the Pacific Rim

This is a list of countries that are generally considered to be a part of the Pacific Rim, since they lie along the Pacific Ocean.

Commerce

The Pacific is a hotbed of overseas shipping. The top 10 busiest container ports, with the exception of Dubai's Port of Jebel Ali (9th), are in the Rim nations. They are home to 29 of the world's 50 busiest container shipping ports:

Organizations

Various intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations focus on the Pacific Rim, including APEC, the East-West Center, Sustainable Pacific Rim Cities and the Institute of Asian Research. In addition, the RIMPAC naval exercises are coordinated by United States Pacific Command.

Bibliography

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south and is bounded by Asia and Australia in the west and the Americas in the east.

At 165.25 million square kilometers (63.8 million square miles) in area, this largest division of the World Ocean—and, in turn, the hydrosphere—covers about 46% of the Earth's water surface and about one-third of its total surface area, making it larger than all of the Earth's land area combined.

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. The Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific is the deepest point in the world, reaching a depth of 10,911 metres (35,797 ft).

The eastern Pacific Ocean 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 favourable winds on reaching the ocean. He called it Mar Pacifico, which in both Portuguese and Spanish means "peaceful sea".