Global Ocean

The Global Ocean is the world's only ocean, encircling a single continent, Pangaea II. The Global Ocean is so large that, from space, some views would show the Earth as an entirely blue planet: its center lies 10,000 miles from the nearest coast.

The water of the Global Ocean is generally warm, as a result of higher global temperatures and a brighter sun beating down upon it. Because the predominant ocean currents run east to west and are not divided by continents, there is little water movement between north and south: the cold waters of the South Pole do not mix with the warm waters on the equator. As a result, there is a very steep temperature gradient between high and low latitudes. Global temperatures are still high enough to prevent the formation of ice caps at the poles.

One dramatic result is the occurrence of extreme hurricanes with 400-kilometer-per-hour winds and powerful storms.

During the 100 million AD mass extinction, the lack of sunlight and increase in acidity killed off the plankton in surface waters, leading to a complete collapse in the oceanic food chain which wiped out most fish species. With many niches left open, a new group of animals rose up from the deep: silverswimmers, a type of crustacean. Immediately after the mass extinction, they developed the ability to reproduce while still in the larval form, sidestepping the need to develop into slow adults. These new crustaceans quickly filled the niches left by fish and other marine animals, becoming filter-feeders, predators, and scavengers which live everywhere from the sea bed to the open ocean.

Not all the fish went extinct, however. Sharks survived, and one species, the sharkopath, has become a social pack hunter, communicating by the use of bioluminescent signals. Sharkopaths work together to hunt the biggest animal in the ocean: the rainbow squid, a blue whale-sized squid with a highly developed colour-changing and camoflauge system.

Another group of fish which survived the mass extinction dominate the skies above the Global Ocean, taking the place of the seabirds: these are the flish, ray-finned fishes which have evolved the capability to fly. Some are maritime predators, catching silverswimmers from above; others are filter-feeders, bobbing across the waves; pirates, stealing silverswimmers from other flish; and migratory predators, following silverswimmers for thousands of miles over the year.