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.
South Pacific Sandy Island 'proven not to exist'
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Re: South Pacific Sandy Island 'proven not to exist'
#12What happens if you zoom in on the island using google maps?
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Re: South Pacific Sandy Island 'proven not to exist'
#13The island now has a wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Island_(New_Caledonia). Created today.
Re: South Pacific Sandy Island 'proven not to exist'
#14What happens if you zoom in on the island using google maps?
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
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.
Re: South Pacific Sandy Island 'proven not to exist'
#15I'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.
Re: South Pacific Sandy Island 'proven not to exist'
#16Isn't this a standard method for a 'poor-mans copywrite' in cartography?
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.
Except that it never appeared on the official australian and french maps. If you use Google Maps instead of an official navigation chart for navigation, you probably don't deserve better...
Re: South Pacific Sandy Island 'proven not to exist'
#17I'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.
Flying over the area would likely be more a reasonable option
Unless you actually wanted to sail around the south pacific for a month and be able to call it "work"
Re: South Pacific Sandy Island 'proven not to exist'
#181. Elon Musk launches rockets from the area and talks about the mysterious Hyperloop
2. Islands begin to disappear
Conclusions?
Re: South Pacific Sandy Island 'proven not to exist'
#19In 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.
Re: South Pacific Sandy Island 'proven not to exist'
#20Isn't this a standard method for a 'poor-mans copywrite' in cartography?
"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."
Amazing what you learn if you read the article.