An island spent 136 years on the map. Then a ship sailed through it.
Sandy Island appeared on charts from 1876, survived into Google Earth, and turned out to be open water two kilometres deep.
In November 2012 the Australian research vessel Southern Surveyor altered course to look at something odd. Charts showed a landmass roughly the size of Manhattan in the Coral Sea, north-west of New Caledonia. Google Earth showed it as a dark smudge. The ship sailed straight over the spot and found open ocean, with the seafloor more than a kilometre below the keel. The island had been on charts since 1876. It had never been there.
What we can show
The Australian research vessel Southern Surveyor, operated by CSIRO's Marine National Facility, surveyed the charted position in 2012 and found open ocean.
Documented2 supporting
The charted position of Sandy Island lies over water more than a kilometre deep.
Documented2 supporting
- Supports: Obituary: Sandy Island (1876-2012)
- Supports: General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans
Sources
- Obituary: Sandy Island (1876-2012) — Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union, 2013-04-09 · Peer-reviewed
- Marine National Facility, operator of RV Southern Surveyor — CSIRO · Institutional
- General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans — GEBCO · Institutional
Found a problem?
Every claim above is anchored to a passage you can open and read. If one of them doesn’t hold up, tell us — that is how this gets corrected.