The Seven Seas are a lie. The bodies of water that the traditional title encompasses have changed over the centuries, but today include the North and South Atlantic, North and South Pacific, Arctic, Indian, and Southern. All of them are actually oceans. Seas, on the other hand, are by definition much smaller and at least partly enclosed by land—think the Mediterranean or Sea of Japan. (The North Atlantic’s Sargasso Sea, which is defined by the ocean currents that surround it, is an exception.) Geologists would go a step further, and…
