The name Pacific, which means peaceful, was given by the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan to Pacific Ocean in 1520. It is largest and deepest of the world’s five oceans, comprises of a third of the earth’s surface and has more than half of the world’s water. The part north of the equator is called the North Pacific and the part south of the equator, the South Pacific. On its east are the North and South American continents, on the north the Bering Strait, on the west, Asia, the Malay Archipelago, and Australia, and on the south the Southern Ocean. In the southeast is the Atlantic Ocean. It has an area of sixty million square miles which is considerably more than the entire land surface of the world.

The Pacific islanders are historically sea faring people who spread eastwards through Polynesia with earliest posts being Tonga and Samoa. They arrived in about 420 BC in Tonga and 200 BC in Samoa.

Hawaii was reached in about AD 400, Easter Island, around AD 500 and Tahiti in about 600.

The Pacific Ocean has a significant role in the world economy. It has low-cost sea transportation between East and West, rich fishing waters, oil and gas fields and minerals. More than half of the world’s fish comes from the Pacific Ocean. US, Australia, NZ, China, and Peru are dependent on the exploitation of offshore oil and gas from Pacific.