The Water Planet Looking at the Sea The Earth from space. Only about three-tenths of our globe is covered with land.
Some scientists consider the waters around Antarctica to be a separate, fifth ocean as well.
Seventy-one percent of the Earth's surface is ocean. If all the continents were crammed into one corner of the Earth, the vast extent of the world ocean could easily be seen. In reality, of course, the continents are not bunched together as shown in the figure to the right, but instead are spread out over the entire Earth's surface. Most oceanographers, however, believe that a long time ago in the Earth's geologic history all of the continents were once grouped closely together in much the same manner. The Changing Oceans Oceans have been created and then destroyed.