who discovered the pacific ocean

The Pacific Ocean was first seen by a European when Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and reached it in 1513.

Quick Scoop

• Vasco Núñez de Balboa is credited as the first European to “discover” the Pacific Ocean from the Americas in 1513, after an overland expedition across Panama.

• From a global perspective, Indigenous peoples of Asia, Oceania, and the Americas had lived around and navigated the Pacific for thousands of years before Balboa.

• Balboa originally called it the “South Sea” (Mar del Sur); a few years later, Ferdinand Magellan gave it the name “Pacific” (“peaceful”) during his circumnavigation voyage.

So in most history books, the answer to “who discovered the Pacific Ocean?” is Vasco Núñez de Balboa—but modern historians note that this refers only to the first recorded European sighting, not the true human discovery of the ocean.