INTERESTING FACTS WORLD

Incredible and fun facts to explore

Indian Ocean facts

While investigating facts about Indian Ocean Map and Indian Ocean Dipole, I found out little known, but curios details like:

About 2 guys, who, without proper permits, equipment and no food and money, climbed Mt. Everest, and then paraglided and kayaked into the Indian Ocean in one trip

how indian ocean got its name?

During the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami on 26 December 2004, fishermen said they saw with their own eyes "the reality of generations of legends . . . the remains of ancient temples and hundreds of refrigerator-sized blocks, all briefly exposed before the sea swallowed them up again."

What is indian ocean dipole?

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what is the largest island in the indian ocean. Here are 50 of the best facts about Indian Ocean Islands and Indian Ocean Tsunami I managed to collect.

where is the indian ocean located at?

  1. An uncontacted tribe still inhabits an island in the Indian Ocean, living as simple hunter-gatherers. They are vigorously hostile to outsiders, and have not yet developed early technologies such as agriculture or writing.

  2. In the 60s the US struck a deal with the UK to buy an unpopulated Indian ocean island for a military base. The UK didn't have an unpopulated island, so it forcibly expelled the inhabitants of the British Indian Ocean Territory until it WAS uninhabited.

  3. A 10 year old British girl saved nearly a hundred foreign tourists at Maikhao Beach in Thailand by warning beachgoers minutes before the arrival of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake tsunami. She learned about tsunamis in school just two weeks prior to the event.

  4. An unconfirmed nuclear blast in the Indian Ocean, called the Vela Incident, was detected in 1979 and never definitively explained

  5. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami which occurred 10 years ago today is the biggest national tragedy in Sweden's modern history even though it occurred in Asia. They lost more citizens (543) than any other western country.

  6. The Iron Snail, lives in the Indian Ocean, more than 2,500 metres deep, it is the only known gastropod with a suit of scale armour, the scales and the shell are mineralised with iron sulfide, these snails make a skeleton out of iron, it's the only animal so far known to do so.

  7. Sri Lanka and India were connected by a faint 50 kilometer long sandbar that existed until 1480 when a storm broke it. People used to walk the wispy sandbar from the mainland to the large island in the Indian Ocean, losing sight of the land masses. Scientists still argue as to how it was formed.

  8. The Queen of England owns a collection of Islands known as the British Indian Ocean Territories. There are no elections and the heads of state are chosen by the Queen.

  9. There is an island in the Indian Ocean that is illegal to visit due to a native tribe that kills visitors

  10. An uncontacted tribe still inhabits an island in the Indian Ocean, living as simple hunter-gatherers. They are vigorously hostile to outsiders, and have not yet developed early technologies such as agriculture or writing.

indian ocean facts
What is british indian ocean territory?

Why indian ocean is called indian ocean?

You can easily fact check why indian ocean is named so by examining the linked well-known sources.

The Asian brown cloud, a layer of air pollution that appears over South Asia and the Indian Ocean every year between January and March when there is no rain to wash pollutants from the air. Nearly two million people die each year, in India alone, from conditions related to the brown cloud.

The Vela Incident, A nuclear explosion in the Indian ocean of unknown origin. The most widespread theory is that it was a joint Apartheid South African-Israeli nuclear test. - source

Scuba divers caught in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami were reportedly tossed around underwater, yet boats floating above were unaffected and failed to notice the wave as it passed by. - source

Around 3000BC a meteor crashed into the Indian Ocean, creating a 30km-wide crater. This caused a tsunami to hit coastal areas, including Mesopotamia, which be the origin of the flood myths (such as Noah's Ark)

In 2009, the UK tried to prevent the indigenous population of the British Indian Ocean Territory from returning to their homelands by establishing a "marine reserve", making it difficult for them to reclaim their land and re-settle. The documents later showed up on Wikileaks. - source

When indian ocean named?

The Earth's day got shorter by 2.68 microseconds because of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake

How indian ocean was named?

In 1979, pieces of the space station Skylab crashed onto Esperance, a south west Australian town, after the craft broke up over the Indian Ocean. The town's municipality fined the United States $400 for littering

In the middle of NOWHERE where the South Indian Ocean meets the sub-antarctic waters off of Antarctica are a tiny group of islands named the Kerguelen Islands. Mostly home to scientists but four times a year they allow tourists to visit (by boat only, no airports).

A Malaysian woman returning home from Saudi Arabia on 3/8/2014 who hadn't heard of the loss of Flight MH370, saw a plane sinking in the Indian Ocean; she reported to authorities but no one took her seriously even after it was learned that the flight had veered towards the Indian Ocean.

Human skeletons were found floating on rafts of volcanic pumice on the Indian ocean a year after the Krakatoa eruption of 1883

The earthquake that caused the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami generated 9,600 gigatons of energy, equal to 550 million Hiroshima explosions

When indian ocean meets atlantic?

The Red Sea exchanges its water with the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea through the Gulf of Aden.

Marine species in the Indian Ocean that are considered to be endangered include whales, turtles, seals, and the dugong.

The Kerguelen Plateau is a continent of volcanic origins that lies beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean.

A tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004 resulted in the deaths of more than 226,000 people.

Icebergs can be found throughout the entire year in some of the southern regions of the Indian Ocean.

How indian ocean tsunami was caused?

Monsoons commonly occur in the Indian Ocean, producing a large amount of rain in the summer and a lot of wind in the winter.

There are a large number of bays, gulfs, seas, and straits located in the Indian Ocean. Some of these include the Andaman Sea, the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Oman, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Indonesian Seaway, and the Strait of Hormuz.

Earthquakes have occurred in the Andaman Sea because it is the boundary of the Sunda and Burma tectonic plates. The earthquake in 2004 was 9.3 magnitude and resulted in the tsunami that killed roughly 280,000 people along the Indian Ocean's coastal regions.

The highest coral diversity in the northern, western, and central Indian Ocean are found in the Mozambique Channel. There have been 250-300 coral species identified to date but it is believed that it will be closer to 450 species being identified eventually.

In the early 19th century the Indian Ocean was mostly dominated by the United Kingdom but Australia and India soon dominated as the British Empire declined in the region.

There is a 5,000km long mountain range called the Ninety East Ridge that divides the Indian Ocean into east and west regions.

The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami decreased the length of a day by 2.68 microseconds, caused the Earth to lose some of it's oblateness, made the North Pole shift 2.5 centimeters East, and changed the Earth's rotation.

Tuna and shrimp found in the Indian Ocean are important to Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Russia.

The Indian Ocean has the lowest and highest recorded surface salinity levels.

The South China Sea is the main link between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, connecting the Middle East, Europe, and East Asia with shipping lines.

While the average earthquake lasts 10-30 seconds, the catastrophic Indian Ocean earthquake of 2004 lasted nearly 10 minutes.

The temperature of the Indian Ocean makes it difficult for phytoplankton to grow in most areas, which is required as a food source to support life in the ocean. This is one of the main reasons for the limited marine animal life in the Indian Ocean when compared to the world's other oceans.

Roughly half of the 125 deaths in Ethiopian Airlines FL961 crash resulted from drowning rather than injury from impact. Those w/ inflated life vests were pushed up against the ceiling & became trapped once water flooded into the fuselage after the hijacked plane crash landed in the Indian Ocean.

The phytoplankton bloom contributes to feeding the marine ecosystem in the Indian Ocean. As a result the Indian Ocean is the second largest provider for tuna fisherman in the world in terms of economic importance.

This is our collection of basic interesting facts about Indian Ocean. The fact lists are intended for research in school, for college students or just to feed your brain with new realities. Possible use cases are in quizzes, differences, riddles, homework facts legend, cover facts, and many more. Whatever your case, learn the truth of the matter why is Indian Ocean so important!

Editor Veselin Nedev Editor