page_title: Southern Ocean
section_title: Sub-divisions of the Southern Ocean
hierarchical_section_title: Southern Ocean / Geography / Sub-divisions of the Southern Ocean
context_page_description: The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean or the Austral Ocean, comprises the southernmost waters of the World Ocean, generally taken to be south of 60° S latitude and encircling Antarctica. As such, it is regarded as the second-smallest of the five principal oceanic divisions: smaller than the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans but larger than the Arctic Ocean. This oceanic zone is where cold, northward flowing waters from the Antarctic mix with warmer subantarctic waters.
  By way of his voyages in the 1770s, James Cook proved that waters encompassed the southern latitudes of the globe. Since then, geographers have disagreed on the Southern Ocean's northern boundary or even existence, considering the waters as various parts of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, instead. However, according to Commodore John Leech of the International Hydrographic Organization, recent oceanographic research has discovered the importance of Southern Circulation, and the term Southern Ocean has been used to define the body of water which lies south of the northern limit of that circulation.
context_section_description: Sub-divisions of oceans are geographical features such as "seas", "straits", "bays", "channels", and "gulfs". There are many sub-divisions of the Southern Ocean defined in the never-approved 2002 draft fourth edition of the IHO publication Limits of Oceans and Seas. In clockwise order these include (with sector):
  Weddell Sea (57°18'W – 12°16'E)
  King Haakon VII Sea (20°W – 45°E)
  Lazarev Sea (0° – 14°E)
  Riiser-Larsen Sea (14° – 30°E)
  Cosmonauts Sea (30° – 50°E)
  Cooperation Sea (59°34' – 85°E)
  Davis Sea (82° – 96°E)
  Mawson Sea (95°45' – 113°E)
  Dumont D'Urville Sea (140°E)
  Somov Sea (150° – 170°E)
  Ross Sea (166°E – 155°W)
  Amundsen Sea (102°20′ – 126°W)
  Bellingshausen Sea (57°18' – 102°20'W)
  Part of the Drake Passage (54° – 68°W)
  Bransfield Strait (54° – 62°W)
  Part of the Scotia Sea (26°30' – 65°W)
  A number of these such as the 2002 Russian-proposed "Cosmonauts Sea", "Cooperation Sea", and "Somov (mid-1950s Russian polar explorer) Sea" are not included in the 1953 IHO document which remains currently in force, because they received their names largely originated from 1962 onward. Leading geographic authorities and atlases do not use these latter three names, including the 2014 10th edition World Atlas from the United States' National Geographic Society and the 2014 12th edition of the British Times Atlas of the World, but Soviet and Russian-issued maps do.
caption: Seas that are parts of the Southern Ocean