Ocean in a Seashell

The shell is held close to your ear, like when you were young and your parents taught you how you could bring the sound of the sea back with you. You listen intently as the air glides inside of and through the shell making it sound as if the ocean was right in front of you in all of its might. You can just about make out the waves crashing against each other. An ocean (from Ancient Greek Ὠκεανὸς (Okeanos); the World Ocean of classical antiquity) is a body of saline water that composes a large part of a planet's hydrosphere. In the context of Earth it refers to one or all of the major divisions of the planet's World Ocean – they are, in descending order of area, the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern (Antarctic), and Arctic Oceans. The word "sea" is often used interchangeably with "ocean" but, strictly speaking, a sea is a body of saline water (possibly a division of the World Ocean) partly or fully enclosed by land.