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Featured articleSea is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on November 2, 2013.
Did You Know Article milestones
DateProcessResult
May 25, 2013Peer reviewReviewed
July 9, 2013Good article nomineeListed
October 5, 2013Featured article candidatePromoted
Did You Know A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on April 29, 2013.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that the sea (wave pictured) contains over 97% of Earth's water?
Current status: Featured article

How to reduce overlap with ocean?

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Please help me. I am currently improving the article ocean. I see a lot of overlap between ocean and sea. I see two options: either we merge the two, or we reduce the overlap (I am for merging but I might be in the minority; I might put up a merger proposal later). Let's assume we are not merging. Then let's understand which content should be in "sea" and which in "ocean" so that we don't have unnecessary duplication and extra work. These are the sections that are overlapping, for example: Currents, waves and swell, biology / life at sea, acidification. What is not overlapping is "human uses" (which is only at sea). So I could put a link across from ocean to sea under a section called human uses. Sea doesn't yet have a section on environmental issues and doesn't mention climate change yet (or only once). Do we perhaps want to set up the two articles so that sea is more about history and human uses whereas ocean is more about geography and current challenges with regards to pollution and climate change? What do you all think? This is a featured article so I hope there are lots of people watching this page. (does it actually still meat featured article criteria? Does it need a review?), FYI User:ASRASR EMsmile (talk) 03:39, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have now made some small changes to sea and ocean. Linking from Ocean to sea with regards to the human uses. And linking from sea to ocean with regards to the environmental issues. So that delineation might be possible and logical. But how to deal with the sections on physical properties, saltwater content, currents etc.: which should be the "main" article for that content and which the sub-article? If e.g. "sea" is the main article for that, then the section on physical properties at ocean should be shortened and rather readers be pointed to the relevant section at sea. EMsmile (talk) 03:54, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"does it actually still meat featured article criteria? Does it need a review?" Yes/No (I see no major problem, but FACs being reviewed thoroughly by the FAC team, so they will give their verdict eventually). What seems to be the problem is that this article is giving too much information about oceans because "There is no sharp distinction between seas and oceans". This could be easily solved if the article Sea discussed information exclusively related to Category:Seas—nothing about oceans, lakes, gulfs, etc.—, and if Ocean discussed exclusively the information about the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern, and Arctic Oceans. (CC) Tbhotch™ 04:08, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hello User:Tbhotch you make it sound easy but it isn't. I think you are coming from a purely geography angle where such a division might work. But what about the topics related to the salty water itself, such as marine pollution? Sea level rise? Ocean adicification? Salinity in general? Waves, tides, tsunamis? Does this information belong with the article sea or with ocean? This is the question. Even content on navigation and exploration, is that a topic for sea or for ocean? Keeping in mind that this is an overarching article which should briefly introduce all the relevant sub-topics and sub-articles. EMsmile (talk) 04:17, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That information belongs to the respective articles. For example at basins, it says "The Earth's deepest trench is the Mariana Trench which extends for about 2,500 kilometres...", OK, but how is that relevant for seas; or the information about tsunamis, that subsection never explains how it affects seas. Most of it is information concerning Tsunami. This is what I mean that this article is unfocused and it's weird it passed the FAC in this condition. (CC) Tbhotch™ 16:23, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure it is helpful to split this discussion away from the one at ocean. Personally, I don't see much merit in dividing these articles according to the somewhat arbitary distinction between oceans and seas in English. I would prefer a clearly explained division of the major topic areas between two articles: basic geography, science excluding biology, marine biology, and human interactions/history. Johnbod (talk) 17:12, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe it would help to try to define the logical scope of each of these articles before attempting any major changes. I do not expect this to be easy, but it may be necessary. Some overlap may be inevitable, but it should be possible to restrict it to summary sections. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 05:54, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect that we all have distinct and separate conceptions of what comprises a sea and what comprised an ocean. For me, as an island dweller, a sea is mostly about the coastal area, waves, sea-shore, cliffs, continental shelf fisheries. I.e small and relatively local. In contrast Ocean is distant, extensive, home to major cetaceans, sources of great currents and trade winds and including the great abyssal depths. Unfortunately arbitrary distinctions like that are very imprecise, individualistic (I suspect that everyone else will have their own distinctive take on the differences) and most significantly, very difficult to tease out into separate Wikipedia articles. I think that my solution would be two relatively short overview articles that set our the similarities and dissimilarities between the two topics with the major overlaps such as nerine biology, marine chemistry, Ocean currents, Trade winds etc all in distinct articles.  Velella  Velella Talk   15:28, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As I've said in at least one of the various discussions currently running, I don't think this approach is fruitful. Of course all the sub-articles already exist. We should try to define the scopes, but logic won't get us very far, nor do we want to spend much time in ocean explaining the differences to sea, and vice versa. I think we need to agree a largely arbitrary division between the two articles (I don't see why this can't be "easy", though getting agreement to it may not be), then rearrange the articles to suit, making sure it is explained what is covered in the other article. Johnbod (talk) 18:27, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think Velella and EMsmile have described a similar distinction of Sea (general) and Ocean (oceanographic). I think that sounds like a start.

PS: even though I think that there is still confusion of what the difference between the articles of Ocean and World Ocean is, at the moment it sounds like Ocean is refocused from an article about any ocean to what World Ocean tries to do. As stated elsewhere I am for keeping all three articles with one as the main and two as sub; or merging all three. But lets see where this duplication reduction takes us. Nsae Comp (talk) 07:21, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

My impression of the distinction between ocean and sea is similar to Velella's: seas are small, ocean is vast. EMsmile; with such a difficult discussion, it's vital it takes place in one location. Could you coordinate that by closing some discussions and pointing to one central location? And is it possible to divide that long discussion up in concrete subquestions? FemkeMilene (talk) 08:25, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'll try to close some discussions and point to one central location, and structure the long discussion but I am struggeling. As others have pointed out before, I don't have experience with complicated mergers, splits or re-writes, so I am finding it quite a challenge... EMsmile (talk) 13:03, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Update: The article "world ocean" has now been merged into "ocean" and a redirect has been put in place. This means that the remaining two articles out of the group of formerly three interrelated articles are now sea and ocean. I am still pondering over how and where the discussion about sea and ocean overlap should best take place and how I can help to structure it. Any advice? EMsmile (talk) 03:37, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@EMsmile: thank you for your work and sorry for not replying at World Ocean (my outside world was demanding). As far as I can see I am fine with what changed. Regarding Sea I am for merging more into Ocean, because there is considerable duplication and fragmantation of issues that should be at Ocean. Sorry that I cant participate much at the moment, but the ouside world is still keeping me busy (glad that I could drop by and answer a bit though).Nsae Comp (talk) 13:08, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

How to reduce overlap with ocean? (take 2)

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In March this year I had started a discussion called "How to reduce overlap with ocean?" (please scroll up). I'd like to revisit this today and provide an update. Last month, I spent a lot of time together with an external expert to rework the ocean article. I think it's a lot better now, more comprehensive and quite up to date regarding the topic of oceans and climate. During the process we did copy (and adapt) some content from the "Sea" article and this is all documented in the edit summaries (I normally prefer moving content from one Wikipedia article to another, not copying; in this case, the copying was the more prudent approach; it wasn't very much anyhow). I've also set up a discussion about the overlapping content of the two articles and possible options to reduce overlap; this is available in user space here. EMsmile (talk) 13:14, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

After doing this work, my preferred option would be Option 3 which I have named "Build up the article "Ocean" and refocusing the "Sea" more on human aspects". Right now the implemented option is Option 4 which I called "Build up the article "Ocean" and not modifying the Sea article at all". The path of least resistance would be to just leave it as Option 4, i.e. the new status quo. The disadvantage I see with that option is: readers might come to the "sea" article and not realise that similar/better/more up to date content is available at Ocean. Also future editors might start to rework, add and update some content of the Sea article which is actually already covered in the Ocean article, which is potentially inefficient and not optimal use of our time. Are there ways to avoid these risks? - I am pinging a few people who might have an interest in this conversation: Nsae Comp, Johnbod, Femkemilene, Pbsouthwood, Pyrrho the Skeptic, Cwmhiraeth. EMsmile (talk) 13:13, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
EMsmile, after reviewing the discussion and analysis, option 3 seems best to me, too. The overlap was always strange to me, and the most useful distinction in my mind is the sea as it relates to human experience, history, and culture. Pyrrho the Skeptic (talk) 17:33, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Pyrrho the Skeptic. I am wondering if - as a starting point - folks would agree to modify the article's hatnote? Currently at sea we have this hatnote: "This article focuses on the collective seas of Earth. For individual seas, see List of seas." We could maybe change it to "This article is about the collective seas of Earth, in particular the human experience, history and culture. For natural science aspects, see also Ocean. For individual seas, see List of seas." EMsmile (talk) 01:04, 3 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I like that, for what it's worth. Hopefully others will chime in, too Pyrrho the Skeptic (talk) 17:37, 3 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the ping and awesome work!♡ ... Regarding the Sea article I have allways liked the approach to focus Sea on the understanding of humans as large open (salty) bodies of water. So yes I find that solution of yours good and your work has been great afterall. I would though go even further and broaden that framing by including the list of Seas in this understanding of any large open salty bodies of water. I hope that makes sense. But that might be too much for now anyway. Keep being awesome! Nsae Comp (talk) 22:48, 3 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Nsae Comp, thanks for your friendly words, much appreciated!! :-) Very kind of you. - I don't understand what you meant with "broaden that framing by including the list of Seas in this understanding of any large open salty bodies of water"? EMsmile (talk) 23:45, 3 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, its a very unrefined thought of mine, thus a bit convoluted. Basically I wanted to say that Sea as in Ocean shares with the listed particular Seas that they are both more particular understandings of the Ocean on a more human scale. I hope that makes now more sense. But thats a refinement that might come anyway with focusing the article in the way you proposed, at least as far as I understood your proposal. Nsae Comp (talk) 14:53, 6 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I still don't understand your point, User:Nsae Comp. What's the specific change that you are suggesting for the Sea article? EMsmile (talk) 03:47, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Changed hatnote

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I have just changed the hatnote of the article as per my proposal above on 3 August. It now reads

This article focuses on human experience, history and culture of the collective seas of Earth. For natural science aspects, see more at Ocean. For individual seas, see List of seas.

The purpose of this is, like I said above, to guide future editors to know what the difference is between the ocean and sea article, and therefore to avoid that people think they need to add the same content in both places, e.g. content about how climate change and oceans, or how marine pollution affects the ocean (this should in future go primarily into the ocean article, not the sea article). EMsmile (talk) 03:54, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much for this hatnote EMsmile!! I agree with this 100%: Ocean should have emphasis on science, with only some history and culture. Sea should focus on history and culture, with only some science (for now, we'll have to see where the other discussions about this take us). :) LightProof1995 (talk) 20:10, 8 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Lots of edits that had to be reverted - do we need to increase protection level?

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There seem to be a lot of edits since the beginning of the year that had to be reverted. Should we apply to increase the protection level for this article? Just wondering. EMsmile (talk) 11:36, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: Merging with ocean

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Should this article be merged with ocean? See also prior discussion: § How to reduce overlap with ocean? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 08:00, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Pbsouthwood above in 2021 stated, it would help to try to define the logical scope of each of these articles before attempting any major changes. I think it's impossible to determine if they should be merged without first outlining this. As they stand now, the articles appear to contain significant duplication. The English language further complicates things, as sea and ocean are frequently used interchangeably in conversation. BeReasonabl (talk) 23:29, 21 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well according to the International Hydrographic Organization, an ocean is continental-sized body of water, while a sea is smaller than that. Even in our definition, there are 5 oceans on Earth while there is countless number of seas. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 02:06, 22 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
They should not be merged. The Sea and the Ocean are not the same, the terms are just often incorrectly interchanged. (See source here) Dobblestein 🎲 🎲 talk 16:47, 22 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Don't merge. (invited by the bot) Per rationales described by CactiStaccingCrane the are not synonyms. North8000 (talk) 14:37, 22 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The section on environmental issues

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I have a problem with the section on environmental issues. It currently has two sub-headings: ocean acidification and marine pollution. This seems arbitrary to me as it should either have a comprehensive list of sub-headings or none at all and rather link across to Ocean where all this is covered in detail in the section on "threats from human activities". If we agree that "Ocean should have emphasis on science, with only some history and culture. Sea should focus on history and culture, with only some science" (wording by LightProof1995 above on 8 March 23), then I think this section on environmental issues needs to be condensed and the reader referred to Ocean for more details very clearly.

In addition, the content about ocean acidification is now quite outdated here, using refs from around 2011 until 2019. I recently did some work on updating the ocean acidification article. I am not motivated though to update the same content here as well as I think it's inefficient to have content about ocean acidification in all sorts of articles and having to update it everywhere. For that reason I tend to use excerpts when it comes to fast changing topics such as ocean acidification, ocean temperature, ocean heat content and so forth. (I know that not everyone likes excerpts.) So my suggestion is to condense the section on environmental issues here and ensure readers know that there are plenty of issues but that the details can be found at Ocean; rather than building up this section here. EMsmile (talk) 09:33, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

See also previous discussion about this section two years ago here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sea/Archive_2#Environmental_issues EMsmile (talk) 09:36, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sigh. Not at you, but at the mess that once more results from the wholesale utter rescoping of this article without discussion from those years ago. The material belongs at ocean, which was the sole article covering the entire worldwide marine environment before the hijacking if this article. Bluntly, this article was rescoped from a proper scientific use of the term because the hijacker couldn't be bothered to actually look and see what the scope of this article was in relation to other articles and just assumed that his colloquial use, peculiar to a single dialect, was the proper one. Worst was when more numerous people objected (myself included) they were bulldozed and dismissed, with outright loss saying the scope was extensively discussed. No, it wasn't.
All of these scope issues are going to continue to exist as long as this article and ocean are separate. Because they're describing the exact same thing. Wikipedia articles are about concepts, not words (it's not Wiktionary) so insisting we needed a separate article because the term "sea" and the term "ocean" are both used to describe the entire marine environment, as has been done, is against Wikipedia policy and has essentially created a content fork.
The attempt to make one oceanographic and the other cultural was a good thought, but is unworkable under this title. What needs to be done is this article needs to be split between the sea in culture, which is quite clear is scope (though should have the "the" in its title to be idiomatic, as the distinctive article is always used when referring to the whole) and the bare title "sea" made into a redirect to ocean, where the terminology section can cover the details, as it already does. The hatnote should be totally reworked to say "Sea redirects here. For a list of particular seas, see List of seas." As it stands, the ocean article already includes "the sea" as a boldface synonym in the lead, though it is linked to this article, which is itself a problem because links aren't supposed to be bolded.
No matter what, though, these redundant articles are unacceptable. The only reason there are two articles in the first place is because some people couldn't accept that usage varies by dialect, and in direct contravention of WP:ENGVAR created a redundant article fork. That needs to be fixed, at long last. oknazevad (talk) 13:13, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with both of you! Thanks so much for bringing up the Environmental issues section problems EMsmile, and thanks so much for bringing up The sea in culture article oknazevad! :)
Does this mean we are leaning toward merging the human/cultural aspects of this article with Sea in culture, and the science aspects of this article with Ocean? What if we had Sea split into an article called Humans and the sea to go along with the Sea in culture article, and then moved the science stuff at Sea to Ocean? LightProof1995 (talk) 19:27, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, something like that would also be my preference. The existing repetition of physical properties at Sea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea#Physical_science) with the equivalent section at Ocean (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean#Physical_properties) is hard to swallow. However, I suspect that such a proposal will get exactly the same fierce opposition that it got when I raised it about 2 years ago. I can understand it from an emotional level: there are some editors (mainly two, I think) who have worked hard at getting the Sea article to featured article status. I get that they don't want to see it ripped apart now. So that's how we ended up with this peculiar situation that we have now. EMsmile (talk) 11:26, 10 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As a baby step for improvement, I am suggesting to shrink the "environmental issues" at Sea down to a minimum and refer the readers across to the same content at Ocean. EMsmile (talk) 11:26, 10 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As an interesting aside: the pageviews for Ocean are always two to three times higher than for Sea and have a slight trend up, whereas those for Sea have a slight trend down: https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=0&range=all-time&pages=Ocean%7CSea (when comparing the average of the last two years with the average of 2015 to 2020). EMsmile (talk) 11:26, 10 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Humans and the sea" would be redundant to the sea in culture, as culture is by definition the collective experience of humans. And we really need to get that moved to add the definite article. The omission really grates, as it's so unidiomatic. oknazevad (talk) 12:40, 10 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well, where does that leave us in practical terms now? Can we take any baby steps? Consensus? EMsmile (talk) 14:38, 13 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I agree it doesn't make sense to have an "Acidification" header here but not at Ocean#Threats from human activities. So I'd just move that entire section over, and then condense the Environmental section here down to a single, general paragraph, with no sub-headers (neither Acidification nor Marine pollution). LightProof1995 (talk) 05:22, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with your suggestion to remove the sub-headings and to just have a general paragraph that summarises this content. But we probably don't have to move the section about acidification to ocean as over there at ocean, we already have a summary section on the effects of climate change which is actually an excerpt from effects of climate change on oceans. That article uses an excerpt from ocean acidification. The content at ocean acidification is good and up to date (I recently worked on this article together with some experts from NOAA). So if anything, any useful content about ocean acidification that is at Sea could be merged into ocean acidification but I doubt that there is additional content that is not already at ocean acidification and hence it would likely jut introduce repetition (but worth checking). - Do you have time/energy to carry out these edits? EMsmile (talk) 08:56, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm currently embroiled in an WP:ANI dispute, unfortunately :( They are accusing me of not being WP:CIR. If this wasn't the case, I would say, "For you, @EMsmile? Absolutely!! :)" LightProof1995 (talk) 01:23, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I am sorry to hear! I hope you come out unscathed. If it's any consolation, I am currently the subject of a WP:CCI (here). - I can gently make those changes at Sea but I wonder if consensus has been reached; I guess people will speak up when they see my changes... EMsmile (talk) 09:29, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've made a start at re-arranging this. I've added a short bullet point list for an overview. Have moved content about pH (current and future) to above in the section about seawater properties. I am undecided if the section about marine pollution should stay how it is or if it should be merged into marine pollution. EMsmile (talk) 09:53, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Is there really such a thing as a landlocked or nearly landlocked sea?

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First paragraph of the lede has

Particular seas are either marginal seas, second-order sections of the oceanic sea (e.g. the Mediterranean Sea), or certain large, nearly or completely landlocked (e.g. the Caspian Sea).

I believe that the Caspian Sea is generally, or at least sometimes considered a lake. Our article Caspian Sea opens with

The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, often described as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea.

and refs are given.

I personally consider the Caspian Sea a sea, but so what, it's the sources that matter. One reason it's considered a sea is that it has "sea" in its name, but so do Salton Sea, Sea of Galilee, etc, but they are not seas. Whither or no, it's contested at least, so we shouldn't flat-out state that it is a sea, anywhere but particularly in the lede. Thus I have removed that passage.

Oh and also we address the subject lower down where we do indeed note that it's debatable.

In fact, are there any "nearly landlocked" bodies of water that are considered to be seas? Lake Maracaibo is nearly landlocked, but our article describes it as a lake -- possibly because of the name, but that's not my call -- but, it is debated also. Since Lake Maracaibo is not incontrovertibly a sea, are there any nearly landlocked bodies of water that are so considered? If not (I haven't checked) we should also remove "nearly...landlocked from the lede also. Herostratus (talk) 18:48, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Explanation of recent major changes

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Hi User:CactiStaccingCrane I see you have made some big bold changes to this article but you have not said anything on the talk page. Can you please explain here your reasoning for making these changes? I am not disagreeing with them (I have long tried to reduce overlap between the sea and the ocean article, see talk page above). But I know there is a bunch of others who were favouring keeping the article as it is (it's a featured article after all) so I expect some pushback. Therefore, it would be good to know if we have a broad consensus for these big changes. The new article size is 32 kB, down from 68 kB on 3 December. A change this big ought to be accompanied with a talk page entry. EMsmile (talk) 09:11, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think I might have been too bold and reverted my edits at Sea. Thinking about it again it does not make sense at all to only put cultural aspect of the ocean in the article titled "Sea", and having another discussion and a clearer consensus is better IMO. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 10:34, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well, nobody actually complained about your edits so perhaps they could have stayed? My advice would have been to make the changes more incrementally (i.e. not all in the space of just a few hours), and perhaps with more explanations in the edit summaries and talk page. But overall, I personally think you were pretty much on the right track, and I hope you don't just give up on the idea. The overlap between sea and ocean ought to be reduced. EMsmile (talk) 12:33, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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