Mesoscale eddies are ubiquitous swirling flow patterns in the open ocean with diameters of around 100 km. They transport a huge amount of heat and material and are therefore key elements of the “weather” of the ocean. Using satellite-based ocean surface elevation, we found that the combined global effect of all mesoscale eddies can be treated as a single strong “super-vortex”. This finding can be helpful to estimate the energy budget of ocean regions where only sparse field data are available.