On Why The Ocean Is A Very Scary Place

​by Charlie Snow
The ocean is a very scary place. Maybe I’m biased, I do have a running streak with
having to be pulled in by the lifeguard and stepping on stingrays, but in my opinion it is much too big and has way too many very deadly things in it to be anything other than terrifying (not to mention you can’t even breath down there).
First off, everything about the ocean as a whole is too large. Each of the seven main
oceans (Arctic, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, North Pacific, South Pacific, Indian, and Southern oceans) combines to cover about 70% of the earth's surface, about 137,942,881 square miles. Aside from surface area, the ocean also holds the deepest point in the earth, the Mariana trench. This trench, which spans a whopping 1,554 miles, is nearly seven miles deep - that means if you dropped Mount Everest in the Mariana trench, the highest point of the mountain would still be about a mile and a half below the entrance of the trench. The amount of pressure at the bottom (16,000 per square inch) is about 1,088 times more than what the average human lives in. And despite all these facts I’ve listed about the ocean so far, scientists have estimated that as much as 80% of it still remains unexplored, meaning there are thousands of possibilities for other terrifying things to be discovered.
The second terrifying thing about oceans is waves and currents. Let’s not forget that
oceans create tsunamis, one of the deadliest natural disasters. Usually created by tectonic plate shifts at the bottom of the ocean or from severe earthquakes, from 1998 to 2017 these enormous waves killed approximately 250,000 people. Traveling at speeds of up to 500 miles per hour and crossing thousands of miles of open ocean before wreaking havoc on the coasts, though they may not be as common as tornadoes or forest fires, tsunamis are nothing to mess with. The tallest tsunami ever, the 1958 Lituya Bay Tsunami, was approximately 1,720 feet tall, and the tallest open water was nearly 62 feet tall, which is about ten times as tall as the average man. As for currents, over 100 people in the U.S. die each year getting pulled into the ocean by a rip current to never come back. Have fun sleeping at night knowing that every six hours, a whirlpool spanning as wide as 33 feet and as deep as sixteen feet appears because of a current. Every day, eleven people drown in the ocean. I repeat, the ocean is a very scary place. 
Finally, there are the creatures in the ocean. The blue whale is by far the largest animal on the planet and though the vast majority of whales are human friendly, killer whales are sick and twisted enough to make up for the otherwise peaceful group of species. Known to torture and play with their food before killing it and to just kill animals for fun, killer whales have often been compared to house cats for their cruelty to their prey. Another aquatic mammal that should be a lot more feared than it is is the dolphin. Feel good movies like Dolphin Tale neglect to tell the other side of the story, that dolphins will rape almost any other sea life they can get their flippers on, kill each other’s babies, and in packs that sometimes reach up to 1,000, they will, in killer whale fashion, kill other ocean life for sport, including attacking humans. Not to mention they are incredibly intelligent creatures, smart enough to be used by the U.S. Navy. In case you aren’t scared yet, dolphins have also been recorded passing around pufferfish that secrete a toxic chemical that in small doses can have a narcotic effect. That’s right, dolphins do drugs, kill for sport, torture their prey, hunt in packs of up to 1,000, rape each other and anything else they like, and kill their babies. If you thought I was going to go on a shark rant, you’re wrong. Dolphins and whales, that’s what you have to watch out for. Of course, sharks are dangerous but only 4 people die each year from shark attacks and also ,sharks haven’t yet been recordeddoing the equivalent of drugs. Though there are over 1,200 venomous fish species in the ocean (that we know of) my real point here is stay away from dolphins and killer whales.
Now maybe any number of the things I just listed fascinates you. Maybe you are one of
those brave souls willing to explore that unexplored 80% of the ocean or start Tsunami Chasers, the sequel to Storm Chasers, or research a creature as mentally depraved as dolphins or killer whales. I can’t say I would understand your decision to do so but if you must charge headfirst into the most terrifying place on earth, please be careful. And if you don’t like the ocean, if you, like me, have bad luck with life guards and stingrays, then take comfort in the fact that you are not alone in your very rational fear.
None of this, however, means you get to start leaving trash on the beach or trying to harm the ocean in any way. Someone smart once said we’re most afraid of the things we don’t understand and we don’t understand 80% of the ocean. Also we
don’t want to anger the dolphins, they might come after us.

Tsunamis - WHO | World Health Organizationhttps://www.who.int › Health topics
The tallest tsunami wave ever wasn't the deadliesthttps://www.preventionweb.net
› news › tallest-tsunami…
The World's Largest Whirlpools - WorldAtlashttps://www.worldatlas.com › World
Facts
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01pfwhk