The maritime trade of many of these countries depends on foreign shipping companies, for the most part British, American, or Japanese.Most of the maritime cargo consists of petroleum (from the Indian Ocean Basin and Indonesia), forest products (from Indonesia, Canada, the USSR, and the USA), metallic ores (from Australia, Canada, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand), foodstuffs, and agricultural raw material (from the USA, Australia, Canada, Indonesia, and the islands of Oceania).Among the Pacific countries Japan has the greatest foreign trade turnover. In China, which remained the focus of imperialist conflicts, as well as in the entire Pacific Basin, the position of the imperialist powers was seriously undermined by the nationalist revolution of 1925–27. The countries of the Pacific Basin are major producers of petroleum, natural gas, coal, bauxite, iron ore, manganese, chromite, copper ore, tin, complex ores, tungsten, nickel, cobalt, sulfur, rare earths, and radioactive minerals.The Pacific countries are an important source of lumber from coniferous trees (USA, Canada, Soviet Union) and such other valuable species as ironwood, sal, and teak (Indonesia and the Philippines). depth: 10,911 m (35,797 ft). In shallower areas the main calcareous sediments are shell and coral-algae deposits. The efforts of the major capitalist powers to establish outposts and acquire markets and sources of raw materials in the Pacific Basin were accompanied by the enslavement of the indigenous peoples. Small icebergs are encountered in the Gulf of Alaska. Other pieces have become small enough to become digestible to animals and have entered the food chain, affecting hormone levels, which can eventually lead to an effect on humans who consume seafood. Japan has a large industrial potential, and the important industrial region of the western USA borders on the Pacific.

Average depth: 4215 m (14 050 ft.). The People’s Democratic Republic of Korea was formed in September 1948, and the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed on Oct. 1, 1949. trading ships had sailed around Africa to the western rim of the Pacific, but European recognition of the Pacific as distinct from the Atlantic Ocean dates from Balboa's sighting of its eastern shore (1513).Magellan's crossing of the Philippines (1520–21) initiated a series of explorations, including those of Drake, Tasman, Dampier, Cook, Bering, and Vancouver, which by the end of the 18th cent. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, Japan seized southern Sakhalin and Kwantung and established a Japanese protectorate over Korea, later annexing the country (1910).At the outbreak of World War I, Japan intensified its expansion in China, occupying Shantung in 1914 and presenting its Twenty-one Demands in 1915. The salinity decreases from 34.5‰ or less at the equator to 32.0‰ or less in the northern high latitudes and to 33.5‰ or less in the south.The water density on the ocean surface increases steadily from the equator to the high latitudes in conformity with the general temperature regime and distribution of salinity. This map was created by a user. Trenches do not occur further north. The largest ports are Huasco (5.5 million tons) and Valparaiso (3.5 million tons) in Chile, Callao (more than 3 million tons) and San Nicolás (9.4 million tons) in Peru, Buenaventura (1.8 million tons) in Colombia, and Salinas, Guayaquil, and Esmeraldas in Ecuador.The USSR trades with almost all the countries of the Pacific Basin via the Pacific maritime routes. It is usually done, artificially, a division from the line of Equator: the North Pacific and the South Pacific. Two new ports have expanded during the 1960’s: Port Hedland (26 million tons in 1974, as contrasted with 200,000 tons in 1960) and Dampier (23 million tons), both of them located on the Indian Ocean. South of Japan the island arcs are divided into two branches, framing the Philippine Basin.