

South Pacific Sandy Island 'proven not to exist' - glennwiz
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20442487

======
nsns
"It's on Google Earth and other maps so we went to check and there was no
island." (Scientists)

"The world is a constantly changing place, and keeping on top of these changes
is a never-ending endeavour." (Google spokesperson)

"...though it cannot hope to be useful or informative on all matters, it does
make the reassuring claim that where it is inaccurate, it is at least
definitively inaccurate. In cases of major discrepancy it was always reality
that's got it wrong." (Douglas Adams)

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ricardobeat

        Sandy Island
        Get Deals & Reviews for Hotels near Sandy Island
        www.tripadvisor.com/AttractionHotels
    

Ah, how I hate you dynamic ads...

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personlurking
I'm waiting to hear that an airliner disappeared over the 'island' and the
crew and passengers are now Lost.

In seriousness, I'm wondering why the trip took 25 days. Flying over the area
would likely be more (of) a reasonable option.

~~~
aes256
Guessing they were also systematically measuring the depth of the ocean around
the area, as they make reference to it being "deep ocean".

In other words, they were seeking to establish that it's not an island that
once existed and has been submerged due to rising sea levels, it flat-out
never existed.

Not sure if it's possible (or at least, best practice) to do that from an
airplane?

~~~
dalke
Sea levels haven't risen all that much - 8 inches in the last 150 years says
one reference. There are other options which are more probable. If it was a
volcanic island then the top could be easily eroded. Consider the island of
Ferdinandea, off the coast of Italy. "At its maximum (in July and August
1831), it was 4,800 m (15,700 ft) in circumference and 63 m (207 ft) in
height." while by January 1832 it had eroded to below sea level. Surtsey is
another example, this off the coast of Iceland, and Kavachi is a third, this
in the Solomon Islands.

If this were the case then depth soundings would easily identify a submerged
volcano, even if it were 100m below the surface. A simple visual fly-by
wouldn't.

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andyjohnson0
The island now has a wikipedia entry:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Island_(New_Caledonia)>. Created today.

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SuperChihuahua
1\. Elon Musk launches rockets from the area and talks about the mysterious
Hyperloop

2\. Islands begin to disappear

Conclusions?

~~~
krapp
You know too much.

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cafard
In Samuel Eliot Morison's _The European Discovery of America_, he has an early
chapter on "Flyaway Islands and False Voyages". He remarks on how long some of
these lasted on the charts, after regular shipping routes went past or "over"
them. Of course, navigation was less precise in the days before Loran and then
GPS.

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andyjohnson0
I wonder if, at some time in the past, some cartographer examining a satellite
image saw something that looked like a long sandy island and labelled it
"sandy island" as a provisional description rather than a name, intending to
get back to it. But they never did, and the description became a name.

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discountgenius
"...some map makers intentionally include phantom streets to prevent copyright
infringements..."

Wait, what?

~~~
chollida1
It's a very common thing to put a made up one way street into the map. If your
competitor has the same street then it's pretty easy to tell they are "using"
your map data.

Cisco allegedly did something similar when it suspected Huwei was usign it's
source code. They added some minor typos to error messages and then check the
Huawei routers and sure enough they had the same mis-spellings.

Since no one programs against the textual strings of the error messages, they
jumped to the conclusion it was source code theft and not a clean room
implementation that Huawei was using

~~~
wyclif
Land surveyor and cartographer here. I just came by to say that while "traps"
are common on land maps, in nautical cartography they are not. I don't
understand why anybody would reasonably surmise that this is a "trap island"
since marine cartographers do not use them.

~~~
yen223
The full quote from the article covers your concern.

> "A spokesman from the service told Australian newspapers that while some map
> makers intentionally include phantom streets to prevent copyright
> infringements, _that was was not usually the case with nautical charts
> because it would reduce confidence in them._ "

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sbirchall
Isn't this a standard method for a 'poor-mans copywrite' in cartography?

~~~
ManAboutCouch
The creation of so called 'Trap Streets' is well known -
<http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Copyright_Easter_Eggs>

However putting a non-existent island on a Marine chart used for navigation is
a few steps above that. It looks like it's the result of a mistake, a mistake
that was copied far and wide.

~~~
sbirchall
Yeah, that's the ticket... guess I wasn't thinking about the requirements for
using said charts for effective navigation. I was just wondering if this would
precipitate infringement claims once the point of origin is identified. As in
it's an accidental "Trap Island" but it's caught some rubes nonetheless...

------
ghshephard
Interesting to note - while the adjoining areas are well covered by Apple
Maps, they don't have a marker for "sandy island" in that spot of ocean - so
clearly using a different source.

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greenyoda
There are apparently many other "phantom islands":
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_island>

------
yuokool12
What happens if you zoom in on the island using google maps?

~~~
TillE
It's the same black blob. As usual, there's no higher-resolution data for
small remote islands.

Though if it weren't labeled as "Sandy Island", I would think it's just an
artifact of some kind. It certainly doesn't look like any real island at that
distance.

<http://goo.gl/maps/NUWhA>

~~~
paulgb
I assume it's blacked out because their geospatial data shows that it's land
but they don't have satellite data to cover it.

~~~
mxfh
Its seems to exist as an incorrect shoreline in the freely available NOAA
GSHHS Shorelines data[1] which digitalglobe[2] uses to crop low-resolution
satellite images to be replaced with high-resolution land area imagery, with
nothing available for the location this results in the black spot.

Landsat[3] never showed anything there, especially at this size. Earliest
depiction[4] I found in the short time via oldmapsonline.org dates back to
1881 While this otherwise well explored map[5] of 1862 does show nothing in
place.

GeoGarage[6] pretty much says the same.

This only shows how slowly low priority public datasets are updated/maintained
since the french maritime authorities SHOM don't have anything in their
official charts of the area.

[1][http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/shorelines/data/gshhs/version2....](http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/shorelines/data/gshhs/version2.2.0/)

[2][https://browse.digitalglobe.com/imagefinder/navigator.do?nav...](https://browse.digitalglobe.com/imagefinder/navigator.do?navAction=PANDRAG&x=-41&y=-26&width=636&height=434)

[3]<http://landsatlook.usgs.gov/> sorry no direct link possible, just got to
the location zoom in and search for available imagery.

[4][http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/view/search?q=List_N...](http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/view/search?q=List_No=1494.068&showFirstDetail=1)

[5][http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/view/search?q=List_N...](http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/view/search?q=List_No=5023.062&showFirstDetail=1)

[6][http://blog.geogarage.com/2012/11/south-pacific-sandy-
island...](http://blog.geogarage.com/2012/11/south-pacific-sandy-island-
proven-not.html)

~~~
LiamMcCalloway
Not sure what you mean about SHOM?

~~~
andyjohnson0
Service Hydrographique et Océanographique de la Marine

<http://www.shom.fr/>

~~~
LiamMcCalloway
Sorry, I should have been clearer. What did you think the fact that their maps
did not show this island mean?

~~~
mxfh
That the only mapmaking authority to whom this island would actually matter is
France (SHOM). Since it's in their territorial water and it also would extend
their territorial water by being an actual Island. So it's in the very
interest of France to have a clear idea what belongs to them and what not,
also it's their responsibility to provide as accurate as feasible navigational
charts to ensure the safety of ships which travel through their waters.

Look at the french charts featured at geogarage, the post has added a few more
SHOM charts for reference which show no Island.

[http://blog.geogarage.com/2012/11/south-pacific-sandy-
island...](http://blog.geogarage.com/2012/11/south-pacific-sandy-island-
proven-not.html)

So what does it mean?

Basically one would only need to blame Australia for the lack of funding or
interest to ground-truth and update their issued charts outside of their
territorial waters. The easiest explanation would be a lack of communication
between Australian and French nautical mapping authorities. Second to that the
Australian authorities didn't feel the need to do their own mapping by means
of actively acquiring of information on the area by satellite, plane or ship
for civil applications.

------
gonzo
Insert Apple maps joke here

