How is 95% of the ocean unexplored?
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Its only true if you define explored as direct observation. That is, either people on a subarmine look at the surface of the ocean, or robots we send down with cameras. The reason so little is explored is because its difficult to do, and expensive, the ocean is huge and the majority of it has nothing especially interesting going on.
Its mostly thousands and thousand of miles of [This](http://cdn.sci-news.com/images/2013/03/image_946.jpg). And [this](https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/explorations/ex1907/dailyupdates/nov7/media/seafloor-hires.jpg) and [this](https://www.hakaimagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/header-deep-sea-exploration.jpg) Flat, mostly featureless, mostly empty stretches of ocean floor.
That’s kind of a meaningless figure, which is why you hear various different numbers. It depends what you consider “explored.” Satellites have mapped the whole ocean, but only to a precision of about 1500 meters. Sonar has mapped about 20% to 100 m precision. And about 0% has been actually visited.
Because it’s an environment that’s extremely hostile to human life. Even at shallow depths, any mistake probably means death for everyone involved, and then if you try to go deeper down, the pressure becomes an almost unsolvable problem. The risk and expense is extremely high, and the ocean is much larger than you think it is.
Sentence is self explanatory. Nobody has explored it. Do you wanna go?
95% of the mass of water ultimately doesn’t mean all that much in terms of knowing about the ocean. You’ll often hear people pull that figure when trying to make the ocean sound mysterious, or trying to make impossible claims like modern day megalodon sound believable.
The coasts are all very well explored and that’s where almost all marine life lives.
The surface of the ocean is constantly being recorded and observed by thousands of different satellites.
Important geological formations and the densest populations of deep sea life have also been largely explored.
We understand enough about the functions of the ocean, both biologically and geologically, to accurately predict what’s in the rest of the ocean that we haven’t technically explored yet.
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