Specifically missing this....even under an overcast sky. This is a shot of McIver's Ladies Baths in Sydney, one of my favorite ocean pools.

@fifilamoura wow, beautiful

It's a totally stunning pool (women only, however, which is a historical exception for Sydney). You have to walk down some very steep stairs to get to it. There are quite a lot of pools like this in Sydney (often at the end of a beach, it's the best way to swim if you want to do laps and it's filled by the tide going in and out (every once in a while shark needs to be removed from one). It can get pretty wild when the seas is choppy and the waves are breaking over the edges into the pool. https://www.mciversladiesbaths.com/

@lindsey good question. What did you decide?

i said no - because there's something special about sands and shores that the bay doesn't quite have

@basil sounds like you made a good pick

@smkellat Yeah, there are a lot of questions about what qualifies as "the ocean". I think it takes a very open mind to include freshwater lakes.

@bencurthoys Does it?

Well. If you lived by the ocean in North America a long way from any seas I might think that you used the words interchangeably, and meant that one big connected body of salty that converts two thirds of this planet. If you were a European fisherman with a reputation for pedantry and terminological exactitude I would expect that when you said ocean you meant ocean, because that is the more specific word:

@pebbe I do, too. Very, very slightly.

@benni good question! What do you think?

i think is not an ocean. there are not really waves most of the time.

@adnan if we did that, the crows and deer would eat all our inland corn

@joeyh Point Reyes is pretty great, though

it is, but when you really want to go swimming at a beach and it's March...

@otfrom good question. What do you think?

according to Wikipedia, no

Also, a lot of questions about whether bays, seas, sounds and so on count as the ocean.

For me, if it's a body of salt water connected to other oceans, it's a part of the ocean. That includes the Mediterranean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the San Francisco Bay.

But there were a lot of people who disagreed, and ultimately this is a subjective question.

I realized recently that my preferred habitat was ‘small and deeply irritating cities surrounded by the ocean’

Two minutes from my house. It was hard when I moved away to Montréal and am glad to be back herein NZ and have my children grow up near the sea.

at this rate it is probably going to be a few years before I see an ocean again. I live next to a very large body of water though, so I'll just pretend it is salty in the mean time.

wait, is Baltic Sea an ocean?

I love spending time near the ocean, because the beat of the tide is like the breath of life, and my soul is likewise revived in the mountains.

I very much agree. As someone who was born within and never lived outside of that 30% statistic I find this poll result a bit sad. Perhaps the 70% feel differently, but to me the ocean is calm and quiet, it is pondering and it is coming to oneself. The ocean is life.

I fail to see what's special about the ocean. I miss the mountains, instead.

@monnier That tracks!