The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia—including India, after which the ocean is named—on the north, on the west by Africa, on the east by Australia, and on the south by the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, by Antarctica.)
As one component of the World Ocean, the Indian Ocean is delineated from the Atlantic Ocean by the 20° east meridian running south from Cape Agulhas, and from the Pacific Ocean by the meridian of 146°55' east. The northernmost extent of the Indian Ocean is approximately 30° north in the Persian Gulf. The ocean is nearly 10,000 km (6,200 mi) wide at the southern tips of Africa and Australia, and its area is 73,556,000 km² (28,350,000 mi²), including the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.
The ocean's volume is estimated to be 292,131,000 km³ (70,086,000 mi³). Small islands dot the continental rims. Island nations within the ocean are Madagascar (the world's fourth largest island), Comoros, Seychelles, Maldives, Mauritius, and Sri Lanka. The archipelago of Indonesia borders the ocean on the east.
Read more about Indian Ocean: Geography, Trade, Marine Life, History, Culture and Literature, Bordering Countries and Territories, Major Ports and Harbours, Marginal Seas
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“If you tie a horse to a stake, do you expect he will grow fat? If you pen an Indian up on a small spot of earth, and compel him to stay there, he will not be contented, nor will he grow and prosper. I have asked some of the great white chiefs where they get their authority to say to the Indian that he shall stay in one place, while he sees white men going where they please. They can not tell me.”
—Chief Joseph (c. 1840–1904)
“The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences. Serpents, bears, hyenas, tigers rapidly vanish as civilization advances, but the most populous and civilized city cannot scare a shark far from its wharves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)