North Pacific sea route
Topic: World Transport and Communication · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 7 "Transport and Communication"
Meaning
The North Pacific sea route is a group of routes that link ports on the west coast of North America with ports in Asia. The North American ports include Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The Asian ports include Yokohama, Kobe, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Manila and Singapore. The routes meet at Honolulu in mid-Pacific. The route between Vancouver and Yokohama follows a great circle, the shortest path over a round Earth, which looks curved on a flat map and nearly halves the distance.
Example
A ship carrying goods from Shanghai (China) to Los Angeles (USA) crosses the North Pacific and may stop at Honolulu on the way.
Don't confuse with
- South Pacific sea route: this one links Western Europe and North America with Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific islands through the Panama Canal.
Related concepts
- Water transport
- Containerisation
- Twenty-foot equivalent unit
- Hub-and-spoke model
- Transshipment hub
- Northern Atlantic sea route
- Mediterranean-Indian Ocean sea route
- Cape of Good Hope sea route
- Southern Atlantic sea route
- Honolulu