What ocean is on the West Coast of the United States?

Why this is the answer

USCIS lists a single answer, the Pacific, so there is nothing to choose between. It is the largest ocean on Earth, covering roughly a third of the planet's surface. The name comes from an explorer's good luck with the weather. Ferdinand Magellan crossed this ocean on his voyage around the world in search of spices, met no storms on the way from Spain, and called it the peaceful sea; "pacific" simply means peaceful. He was not the first European to reach it, though. The Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa had already reached it by crossing the Isthmus of Panama. Europe, in other words, only learned of the Pacific in the sixteenth century. For the United States, the Pacific coast came well after the Atlantic one. California joined in 1850 as the 31st state and was the first state to border the Pacific. By 1860 the country stretched from ocean to ocean. Five states touch the Pacific today: Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California and Hawaii. Hawaii was the last of them to join, on August 21, 1959, as the 50th state. The ocean has a place in immigration history too. Between 1910 and 1940, the immigration station on Angel Island, on the West Coast, processed nearly a million people who had crossed the Pacific, and many Asian American families can trace their history through it. The easy mistake here is a swap: hearing "West Coast" and answering Atlantic. The Indian and Arctic Oceans are real oceans, but neither is the one USCIS lists for the West Coast. Since this question has a twin about the East Coast, learn the two as a pair tied to their immigration stations: Angel Island and the Pacific on the left side of the map, Ellis Island and the Atlantic on the right. One detail for older applicants: none of the geography questions from 88 to 93, this one included, carries an asterisk on the official list, so they are not part of the shorter set that people who qualify under the 65/20 provision may study.