You’ve done the Africa homework. You’ve met the Indian Ocean. You are still not ready.
South Pacific Ocean: 75,158,747 km².
All land on Earth, every continent and island together, comes to about 149 million km². The South Pacific alone is half of that. Not the whole Pacific. The southern half. One basin. No continents invited.
Add the North Pacific (64,149,461 km²) and the combined Pacific is about 139 million km², within shouting distance of every dry hectare on the planet. The famous “Earth is a water world” poster was underselling it.
Why your brain never ran the numbers
Land has countries. Water has a fill colour. Atlases label the blue with a word and move on. Nobody ever stood you in front of the South Pacific and said “that shape is fifty Africas of ocean,” so the comparison never stuck. The Philippine Sea already felt ridiculous at 5.5 million. This is fourteen Philippine Seas.
Average depth runs past 4,000 metres. The basin hosts the Mariana Trench on its northern edge and enough empty horizon to make every empire in the history books look like a stain on a tablecloth.
Drop it on the land
Open the South Pacific on an equal-area map. The basin has been lifted and laid across Africa and the surrounding oceans. It doesn’t sit politely inside a continent. It erases the concept of “big country” on contact.
Then add the North Pacific from the picker if you want the full panic. Two shapes, nearly all the world’s land, still mostly water. The map you grew up with drew the continents in high contrast and the important bit in quiet blue. That was a design choice, not a measurement.