Ocean
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third-largest ocean on Earth and the warmest of all. It lies between Africa, Asia and Australia and is named after India, which juts into it from the north.
Picture credit: Letherian3 (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Letherian3 (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Indian Ocean?
Continents on its shores: Africa, Asia, Oceania.
The story behind it
In the lands around the Indian Ocean, the weather is ruled by the monsoon, strong winds that change direction with the seasons. The word comes from the Arabic word for season. Long ago, sailors used these winds like a timetable: they sailed west early in the season, waited a few months and then sailed back east. That is how goods travelled across the sea thousands of years ago. The ocean is dotted with islands, such as Madagascar, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, the Seychelles and Mauritius. Coral reefs, sea-grass meadows and mangrove forests are full of life. Blue whales, green sea turtles and sea cows called dugongs swim in its water. Through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, ships can travel from here to the Mediterranean.
Find it on the globe
Indian Ocean is there as a name written across its water — tap the water and its card opens. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
Questions children ask
How big is the Indian Ocean?
The Indian Ocean covers about 70.6 million km². Sources give different numbers, because they do not all draw its borders in the same places.
Where is the deepest point of the Indian Ocean?
It lies in the Sunda Trench, south of the Indonesian island of Java, at about 7 290 m. In 2019 the explorer Victor Vescovo dived down there in a small submarine and measured about 7 192 m.
Which islands lie in the Indian Ocean?
The biggest is Madagascar, off the coast of Africa. Other well-known islands are Sri Lanka, the Maldives, the Seychelles, Mauritius, Réunion and Socotra.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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