Nearly three-quarters of Britons do not know the correct names of all five of the world’s oceans, with only 29 percent being able to correctly recall all of them, the Telegraph has reported, citing a recent survey.
The most commonly known ocean was the Atlantic, but the Antarctic/Southern, which was officially named an ocean in the year 2000, was frequently omitted when respondents were asked to identify the individual names.
The survey, conducted by UK-based cruise travel agency, bonvoyage.co.uk, found that only 54 percent of the 1,837 British adults questioned could correctly state that there are five oceans. About a third (31 percent) thought there were four. 12 percent believed there to be seven, possibly confusing them with the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the report said.
The research also examined Britons’ knowledge of the world’s seas, finding that just 14 percent of people were able to list 11 or more. 86 percent could not name more than ten seas around the globe. The commonly known were the North Sea, the Caribbean Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.
Steph Curtin, cruise development manager at bonvoyage.co.uk, said: ‘As pretty much anybody working in the cruise industry will tell you, it is near impossible not to develop a somewhat encyclopaedic knowledge of the world’s oceans and seas, especially the ones that have regular cruises passing through them. Having said that, I was a little taken aback to discover that less that 30 percent of those polled were able to name the five oceans of the world.’
