Dear Subscriber, Reader, Parent, Grandparent, Student, Teacher, Citizen, Anyone, and All,

This map was created for Coast & Ocean to help us all see and understand the Pacific Ocean and our relationship to it better. We hope it will pique your curiosity, inspire you to follow the clues it contains, and lead you to books and websites to explore in greater detail the images and links you see here. Most especially we hope that this map will encourage everyone, especially children and young people, to see the Pacific Ocean as oneintricately interconnected whole, rich with life.

If you love this map by Mona Caron as much as we do, we hope you will post it in your office, schoolroom, kitchen, a child’s room, or some other place; that you will take it to meetings where coastal and ocean issues are discussed and use it in ways we never thought of, so that all will get to know and love the great and wondrous Pacific Ocean better and help to protect it.

(In banner) Mandarinfish
The reef-dwelling mandarinfish (Synchiropus splendidus) lives in the western Pacific, from the Ryukyu Islands to Australia. Its vivid blue, orange, and green colors make it popular in the aquarium trade, where it is also known as the "psychedelic fish." (Tile L)

1. Sea horse
Sea horses (Hippocampus) are fish. During courtship, pairs often entwine their tails and swim side by side, or grasp a strand of sea grass and twirl in unison. A female deposits eggs in a pouch on the belly of a male, which carries them till they hatch. (Tile B)

2. Nudibranch
Nudibranchs (sea slugs) are among the most diverse creatures on the planet. This Spanish shawl nudibranch (Flabellina iodinea) is among the species that can swim. It feeds only on orange hydroids, and changes the orange pigment into its own three bright colors. (Tile B)

3. Chambered nautilus
The chambered nautilus (Nautilus pompilius), a relative of squids and octopuses, has about 90 tentacles without suckers, and a shell that provides buoyancy. Like all cephalopods, it swims using jet propulsion, forcing water through a siphon. (Tile G)

4. Dumbo octopus
Dumbo octopuses (Grimpoteuthis) live in the deep oceans and swim using fins, webbed arms, and jet propulsion. Their fins look like cartoon elephant ears. (Tile H)

5. Jellyfish
The deep-sea jellyfish Benthocodon is found near undersea mountains. (Tile H)

6. Tube worms
Giant tube worms (Riftia pachyptila) live around deep hot water vents on the ocean floor. They have no eyes, mouths, or organs for eating or excreting, living in symbiosis with bacteria that nourish them. Temperatures around the vents can reach 572 degrees F. (Tile O)

7. Sea star
Many sea stars (Asteroidea) can push their stomachs outside their bodies through their mouths to surround and digest their prey. Most of the 2,000 species of sea stars have five arms, but some have as many as 40, and if arms break off, they can grow new ones. (Tile N)

8. Radiolarian
Radiolarians are microscopic one-celled zooplankton with intricate geometric mineral skeletons. (Tile N)

9. Kelp
Kelp, a seaweed, often grows in forests that support a rich array of ocean life. (Tile M)

10. Sakhalin Island
On Sakhalin Island, off the coast of Russia north of Japan, rich petroleum and natural gas reserves are being exploited. Many whales feed offshore and are threatened by the heavy industrial activity. (Tile C)

11. Sea eagle
Steller’s sea eagles (Haliaeetus pelagicus) breed around the Sea of Okhotsk, in far-eastern Russia, and overwinter in Japan. They eat mostly salmon and trout, but also dead seals and other carrion. (Tile C)

12. Salmon
Where salmon (Oncorhynchus) go after spawning in their native streams is still a mystery, but recently some have been seen in the North Pacific Gyre. These fish were plentiful along northern Pacific coasts, from Korea and Japan to Alaska and along the coast of North America to Baja California, but many salmon populations are now severely diminished. Fishery closures and efforts to restore stream habitats may help them recover. (Tile K)

13. Container ships
Ships loaded with up to 15,000 containers now carry most of the world’s manufactured goods. Storms wash many containers overboard. (Tile C)

14. North Pacific Gyre and garbage patch
Vast amounts of plastic trash spin in the North Pacific Subtropic Gyre, one of 11 major gyres in the world’s oceans. There are four Pacific garbage patches and four in other oceans. (Tile J)

15. Rubber ducks
Bathtub toys spilled from a container ship in the North Pacific in 1992 have been riding currents and washing ashore ever since. By 2007 some had made their way across the Arctic to the Atlantic Seaboard. (Tile M)

16. Seaweed
Edible seaweeds harvested for human consumption include (on map, left to right) arame, kombu, and wakame. (Tile K)

17. Nuclear waste
For over 20 years, radioactive waste and chemical weapons were dumped off the California coast, especially near the Farallon Islands near San Francisco. It is now thought to be more dangerous to try to remove them than to leave them there. (Tile J)

18. Snow goose
Snow geese (Chen caerulescens), breed in the Arctic, and many travel the Pacific Flyway to overwinter in California’s Central Valley. (Tile K)

19. Marlin
The Indo-Pacific blue marlin (Makaira mazara) is related to swordfish. Marlins can grow over 15 feet long, and can swim almost 70 miles per hour. (Tile E)

20. Deep-sea explorer
The Mariana Trench is the deepest place on earth--36,201 feet below sea level--almost 1.5 miles deeper than Mt. Everest is high. When the manned bathyscaphe Trieste reached the bottom in 1960, the explorers were surprised to find life there. Creatures at these depths must survive extremes of cold, heat, and high pressure. (Tile E)

21. Loggerhead turtle
Loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta) have been tracked from Baja California to Japan, swimming about 7,500 miles. (Tile D)

22. Albatross
Albatrosses (Diomedeidae) have the largest wingspan of any living bird, some over 11 feet, and can glide for hundreds of miles. Chicks hatched on Midway Island, at the western tip of Hawai’i, may die from eating plastic, tons of which wash ashore there. (Tile E)

23. Gray whale
Each year, gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) travel 12,000 miles between the Bering and Chukchi Seas of the Arctic, where they feed in summer, and the warm lagoons of Baja California, Mexico, where they give birth in winter. (Tile J)

24. Coral reefs
Healthy coral reefs, built by colonies of tiny animals called polyps, provide homes for thousands of species, from fish to crabs to nudibranchs. Reefs are threatened by siltation, dynamite fishing, ocean acidification, derelict fishing gear, and bleaching caused by climate change and pollution. (Tile E)

25. Albacore tuna
Albacore (Thunnus albolunga), like other tuna, are speedy swimmers; some have been clocked at 45 miles an hour. Some species of these large carnivorous fish are warm-blooded, so they can range from the tropical ocean to the far north. (Tile I)

26. Jellies
Jellyfish, or sea jellies (Cnidaria) live in all parts of the ocean, and may proliferate as fish populations are depleted. Sea turtles and some large fishes love to eat them. (Tile I)

27. Galápagos Islands
This giant iguana is one of many species that live only in the Galápagos Islands, which are protected within a 43,500-square-mile ocean reserve, one of the largest in the world. (Tile M)

28. Diver
Many divers are now working to explore and help protect the ocean. (Tile F)

29. Anglerfish
Anglerfish (Lophiiformes) use the first spine of their dorsal fins as lures to attract prey. Males are tiny, and attach themselves to females like parasites to feed and breed. (Tile I)

30. Trawler
Industrial trawlers drag huge nets across the sea floor, inflicting damage to deep-sea habitats. This is one of the most harmful types of fishing, so it is increasingly banned or regulated. (Tile I)

31. Shark
Sharks (Selachimorpha) have been around millions of years longer than land animals, and live mostly in coastal waters. Some of the 440 shark species have complex migration patterns. Millions are killed each year, often only for their fins. (Tile I)

32. Giant squid
Giant squid (Architeuthis) can be over 40 feet long. In the Pacific, they live in the deep sea mostly off Japan and New Zealand, and are prey only to sperm whales. The first photos of a live giant squid were taken in 2004. (Tile N)

33. Blue whale
The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is the largest animal that ever lived, but eats mostly krill. It filters its tiny prey from the water through baleen plates in its mouth. (Tile O)

34. Spookfish
The deep-sea spookfish (Winteria telescopa) has barrel-shaped eyes that look out through its transparent head. (Tile G)

35. & 36. Magnifier
A close look at seawater reveals tiny life forms--plankton (36) such as copepods, radiolaria, diatoms, and algae--mixed with fragments of plastic (35) that keep breaking down into ever-smaller bits. (Tile H)