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60 free Atlantic Ocean trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Atlantic is the ocean that made the modern world. Norse sailors crossed it first, Columbus crossed it most consequentially, and for three centuries after 1492 it carried the silver, sugar, slaves and settlers that reshaped four continents. This quiz starts with the basics an eight-year-old can get (which ocean is bigger, what 'the pond' means) and works up to the ridge that splits it in two, the trench that holds its deepest point, the gyres and the Gulf Stream, the shoreless Sargasso Sea and the eels that spawn there. It then turns to the people who crossed it: Leif Erikson and Vasco da Gama, Cyrus Field's telegraph cable, Alcock and Brown, Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart, the Blue Riband liners and the Titanic, the Battle of the Atlantic, the Bermuda Triangle legend and Napoleon's island prison. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the Atlantic and its features, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. When you are done, try our Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean and Arctic Ocean quizzes, or the general ocean quiz for the whole blue planet.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Atlantic ranks where among the world's five oceans by size?
Second largest
It covers about 17% of Earth's surface and roughly a quarter of its water area.
Q 02The Atlantic takes its name from which figure in Greek mythology?
Atlas
Herodotus wrote of the 'Sea of Atlas' around 450 BC, meaning the waters beyond the Pillars of Hercules and the Atlas Mountains.
Q 03British and American speakers jokingly call the North Atlantic what?
The pond
The understatement dates to 1640, when Charles I's Secretary of State wrote of the 'great Pond'.
Q 04English cartographers of the Age of Discovery also called the Atlantic by what name?
Great Western Ocean
The southern Atlantic was separately known as the Aethiopian Ocean until the mid-19th century.
Q 05Which line divides the Atlantic into its northern and southern halves?
The Equator
The basin itself is an elongated S-shape running between Europe and Africa on one side and the Americas on the other.
Q 06Which narrow passage links the Atlantic to the Mediterranean Sea?
Gibraltar
The Greeks knew it as the Pillars of Hercules, the gateway to the sea beyond.
Q 07The Atlantic–Indian Ocean dividing line runs south to Antarctica from which African headland?
Cape Agulhas
The boundary follows the 20° East meridian from Africa's southernmost tip to Antarctica.
Q 08What is the deepest point in the Atlantic Ocean?
Milwaukee Deep
It lies in the Puerto Rico Trench at 8,376 metres; the ocean's average depth is about 3,646 metres.
Q 09Who became the first person to reach the bottom of the Atlantic, in December 2018?
Victor Vescovo
He dived the Puerto Rico Trench in the submersible Limiting Factor as part of his Five Deeps Expedition.
Q 10What submarine mountain range dominates the ocean's floor?
Mid-Atlantic Ridge
It runs from near the North Pole to Bouvet Island at 54°S and rises 2 to 3 km above the surrounding seabed.
Q 11Which 1870s scientific voyage discovered parts of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge?
Challenger expedition
The rest was mapped in the 1920s by the German Meteor expedition using echo-sounding.
Q 12Which country sits directly on top of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge?
Iceland
The ridge's volcanoes include Eyjafjallajökull, and the island began forming about 62 million years ago over a mantle plume.
Q 13Which supercontinent's break-up opened the central Atlantic around 200 million years ago?
Pangaea
The rifting was triggered by the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province, an eruption linked to the Triassic-Jurassic extinction.
Q 21Why are tropical cyclones rare in the South Atlantic?
Strong wind shear
A weak Intertropical Convergence Zone adds to the effect, while the North Atlantic gets hurricanes every summer and autumn.
Q 22Icebergs threaten shipping near the Grand Banks of Newfoundland mainly during which months?
February to July
The Grand Banks are also one of the world's richest fishing grounds, and the cold currents there breed heavy fog.
Q 23Which Norse explorer is thought to have been the first European to set foot on continental America?
Leif Erikson
The sagas say he founded a settlement called Vinland, roughly five centuries before Columbus.
Q 14On average, which is the saltiest of the major oceans?
Atlantic
Open-ocean salinity runs from 33 to 37 parts per thousand, peaking around 25° north and south where evaporation is high.
Q 15Water in the North Atlantic gyre circulates in which direction?
Clockwise
The Coriolis effect flips it: the South Atlantic gyre turns counter-clockwise.
Q 16Off which point on the US coast does the Gulf Stream veer north-east into open ocean?
Cape Hatteras
Its northern branch, the North Atlantic Current, is what keeps north-west Europe mild in winter.
Q 17Which American statesman had the Gulf Stream charted and printed in 1769?
Benjamin Franklin
He forwarded the chart to the British Post Office to speed up mail ships, but British captains mostly ignored it.
Q 18Which Spanish explorer's 1512 expedition led to the European discovery of the Gulf Stream?
Juan Ponce de León
His log noted a current more powerful than the wind, and Spanish treasure ships soon rode it home.
Q 19The Sargasso Sea is unique among named seas for what reason?
It has no land boundaries
It is defined only by currents: the Gulf Stream, North Atlantic Current, Canary Current and North Atlantic Equatorial Current.
Q 20Which creatures travel thousands of kilometres to spawn in the Sargasso Sea?
European and American eels
European eels migrate more than 5,000 km to get there; the currents then carry the larvae back to rivers on both sides.
Q 24Which explorer proved the Atlantic and Indian Oceans connect by rounding the Cape of Good Hope in 1498?
Vasco da Gama
Two years later Cabral, following the same route, was carried to Brazil by the South Atlantic gyre.
Q 25Which country was the last in the Americas to end the Atlantic slave trade, in 1888?
Brazil
An estimated 9.5 million enslaved Africans were shipped across the ocean between the 15th century and that date.
Q 26John Cabot's 1497 voyage revealed vast stocks of which fish off Newfoundland?
Cod
So-called 'Newfoundland Currency' yielded some 200 million tons over five centuries before the fishery collapsed in the early 1990s.
Q 27Which two postwar conflicts does the Atlantic's history single out as notable military episodes?
Cuban Missile Crisis and Falklands War
After World War II, large naval operations in the Atlantic became rare.
Q 28The Battle of the Atlantic holds what distinction in World War II?
Longest continuous campaign
It ran from 1939 to Germany's defeat in 1945 and cost 3,500 merchant ships and 783 U-boats.
Q 29Which financier led the company that laid the first transatlantic telegraph cable?
Cyrus West Field
He crossed the Atlantic 56 times during the project; the first message, in 1858, went from Queen Victoria to President Buchanan.
Q 30The durable 1866 transatlantic cable was laid from which giant ship?
SS Great Eastern
Built by Brunel and John Scott Russell, it landed the line at Heart's Content, Newfoundland; the continents have been wired ever since.