Talk:Great Australian Bight

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[edit] Ocean name(s)

Adelaidians (?) and Australians, perhaps unfortunately due to the common usage on Australian maps, no more "get to decide" the name of the oceans of the world than do the people of, say, Chile, who refuse to use "Pacific" and have their own name for it on all their maps. The group that does is the IHO (see the WP Southern Ocean article for references....the Adelaide article should not be cluttered with IHO references, I should think!) .

For good or bad (bad if you're a fan of Australian maps and terminology), they have decided that Australia is a continent sitting in the Indian Ocean, with the Pacific along its eastern side. They publish this with carefully delineated borders for these water bodies (see that mentioned in the WP Great Australian Bight article. So, certainly not for Australian use, but for a worldwide English enclopedia, its "Indian Ocean", not "Southern Ocean." The IHO very clearly ruled (after a vote of member nations) that the "Southern Ocean" stops at 60 degrees south, and north of that its the Indian Ocean. Not debatable, unless you want to try to overturn the worldwide and WP-wide acceptance of the IHO as the authority on these matters. Water bodies that Australia does not share with other nations are a different matter, of course. This is how world geographers (and the IHO) avoid having several names for various sides of various oceans. Having done the South Coast Track in Tasmania and looking southwest off the cliffs (an amazing place; huge old growth trees, remote beaches) and saying something to a local about the big Indian Ocean waves and getting an incredulous stare, I know this doesn't make sense locally.....But it's an international encyclopedia.DLinth 18:50, 20 September 2007 (UTC)