Sandy Island, New Caledonia
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Sandy Island (sometimes labelled in French , and in Spanish ) is a phantom island that was charted for over a century as being located near the French territory of
New Caledonia New Caledonia ( ; ) is a group of islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean, southwest of Vanuatu and east of Australia. Located from Metropolitan France, it forms a Overseas France#Sui generis collectivity, ''sui generis'' collectivity of t ...
between the Chesterfield Islands and Nereus Reef in the eastern
Coral Sea The Coral Sea () is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean, South Pacific off the northeast coast of Australia, and classified as an Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia, interim Australian bioregion. The Coral Sea extends down t ...
. The island was included on many maps and
nautical chart A nautical chart or hydrographic chart is a graphic representation of a sea region or water body and adjacent coasts or river bank, banks. Depending on the scale (map), scale of the chart, it may show depths of water (bathymetry) and heights of ...
s from as early as the late 19th century. It was removed from French hydrographic charts in 1974. The island gained wide media and public attention in November 2012 when the R/V ''Southern Surveyor'', an Australian research ship, passed through the area and "undiscovered" it. The island was quickly removed from many maps and data sets, including those of the
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and
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.


History

On 14–15 September 1774, Captain
James Cook Captain (Royal Navy), Captain James Cook (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British Royal Navy officer, explorer, and cartographer famous for his three voyages of exploration to the Pacific and Southern Oceans, conducted between 176 ...
charted a "Sandy I." snaking between latitudes 19° and 20° S and longitudes 163°50′ and 164°15′ E off the tip of New Caledonia. The associated map, titled "Chart of Discoveries made in the South Pacific Ocean…", was published in 1776.See David Rumsey Historical Map Collection. The depiction is part of the existing Grand Terre reef encasing New Caledonia, with coordinates of the area generally true to within , despite Cook's use of
dead reckoning In navigation, dead reckoning is the process of calculating the current position of a moving object by using a previously determined position, or fix, and incorporating estimates of speed, heading (or direction or course), and elapsed time. T ...
. The whaling ship ''Velocity'' reported the fictitious island in the year 1876, as was noted on various late-19th-century maps, including an 1881 German map and 1895 British Admiralty chart. After returning from a voyage in the Pacific, the ''Velocity''s master reported two unusual features. The first was a series of "heavy breakers", the second some "Sandy Islets", or Sandy Island. Both then appeared in an Australian maritime directory for 1879. It noted the islets extended north and south "along the meridian 159° 57' E" and "between lat 19° 7' S and 19° 20' S". Until the appearance of "Sandy I." in 1876–79, the nearest charted land or reef was the Chesterfield Islands westwards on the Bellona Plateau. At the time when the chart was created, it was standard practice for all potential navigation hazards to be listed on such charts as a precaution. Whether the fictitious Sandy Island was intended to be a correction to the position of Cook's islands of the same name is not clear. While at about the same latitudes, Cook's real "Sandy I." was four degrees of longitude—hundreds of miles—further east than the 160° E that became the usual location of the fictitious Sandy Island on later charts and maps that were drafted after the development of the marine chronometer and accurate longitude reckoning. Hydrographic charts later placed the internationally recognized abbreviation "ED" ("existence doubtful") next to Sandy Island, in recognition of subsequent failures to spot the reported island at the expected location. Seafloor mapping in the area by the Australian Hydrographic Service (AHS) determined a minimum depth for the immediate area around and over the island ranging from below
sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an mean, average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal Body of water, bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical ...
. Due to a lack of appearance of an island or depths indicating a shallow reef, Sandy Island was removed from the official French hydrographic charts by the French Hydrographic Service in 1974 after a flying recognition campaign and by AHS in 1985. The information about the status of the phantom island was passed on to other national hydrographic services around the world, but Sandy Island remained in global coastline and bathymetry compilations used by the scientific community and was still there when the RV ''Southern Surveyor'' sailed toward the Coral Sea in October 2012. The erroneously reported island persisted because it was included in the World Vector Shoreline Database (WVS), a data set originally developed by the U.S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency (now the National Geospatial‐Intelligence Agency, NGA) during the conversion from physical charts to digital formats, and now used as a standard global coastline data set. Inconsistencies in this data set exist in some of the least explored parts of Earth, due to human digitizing errors and errors in original maps from which the digitizing took place. One of the most commonly used derived products of WVS is the Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Shoreline Geography Database ( GSHHG), which is ported with Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) software. Although it is now an independent data set, an error in the original WVS data would have been present in this data set.


Pumice sea rafts

The ''Velocity'' may have observed pumice sea rafts (masses of floating
pumice Pumice (), called pumicite in its powdered or dust form, is a volcanic rock that consists of extremely vesicular rough-textured volcanic glass, which may or may not contain crystals. It is typically light-colored. Scoria is another vesicula ...
ejected from an underwater volcano) traversing the Sandy Island area in 1876 and mistakenly recorded them as an island. This explanation is supported by a 2004 study of an eruption of a volcano near
Tonga Tonga, officially the Kingdom of Tonga, is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania. The country has 171 islands, of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in the southern Pacific Ocean. accordin ...
that found that pumice sea rafts associated with that eruption traveled more than westward. An analysis of the pumice trajectory revealed that pumice rafts passed within of the location of Sandy Island, approximately 200 days after the initial eruption. A study of coral migration from Tonga to the
Great Barrier Reef The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system, composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over over an area of approximately . The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, ...
found pumice rafts to be the mode of transportation, with a predicted path consistent with the 2004 study. Wind and ocean surface currents in the area may combine to funnel pumice rafts through the area between
Fiji Fiji, officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies about north-northeast of New Zealand. Fiji consists of an archipelago of more than 330 islands—of which about ...
and New Caledonia on their way to Australia.


"Undiscovery"

As noted above, the French Naval and Oceanographic Service removed the island on its nautical charts in 1974. Public claims that the island did not exist began in April 2000 by
amateur radio Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is the use of the radio frequency radio spectrum, spectrum for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, radiosport, contesting, and emer ...
enthusiasts on a DX-pedition. They noted that it was shown on some maps, but not on others, such as the 1999 ''
Times Atlas of the World ''The Times Atlas of the World'', rebranded ''The Times Atlas of the World: Comprehensive Edition'' in its 11th edition and ''The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World'' from its 12th edition, is a world atlas currently published by HarperCo ...
'', 10th Edition. A discovery of the island's absence was again made on 22 November 2012 by Australian scientists aboard the R/V ''Southern Surveyor'' studying
plate tectonics Plate tectonics (, ) is the scientific theory that the Earth's lithosphere comprises a number of large tectonic plates, which have been slowly moving since 3–4 billion years ago. The model builds on the concept of , an idea developed durin ...
in the area. During the voyage, they noticed a discrepancy between different maps and decided to sail to the supposed location to investigate. The crew found no island; depths recorded were never less than . They found that " e ocean floor didn't ever get shallower than 1300 metres below the wave-base". The status of the purported island also became the subject of discussion on scientific mailing lists, such as GMT-HELP, in late November 2012. Some scientists were initially skeptical that such an error could exist, since a signature was present in various global terrain data sets, such as the bathymetric data from the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans, which reported an elevation of over the location of Sandy Island. Some data sets derived from satellite imagery indicated that
sea surface temperature Sea surface temperature (or ocean surface temperature) is the ocean temperature, temperature of ocean water close to the surface. The exact meaning of ''surface'' varies in the literature and in practice. It is usually between and below the sea ...
s were absent in the location, suggesting the presence of land. However, it became apparent that a land
mask A mask is an object normally worn on the face, typically for protection, disguise, performance, or entertainment, and often employed for rituals and rites. Masks have been used since antiquity for both ceremonial and practical purposes, ...
was applied to these data sets during pre-processing to differentiate between land and water. Since the World Vector Shoreline Database (WVS) has become the standard global coastline data set used by the scientific community, errors that existed in WVS propagated into data sets that use a land mask. Therefore, rather than providing independent evidence for the existence of an island, the appearance of Sandy Island in bathymetry and satellite imagery data sets originated from spurious digitized geometries derived from the WVS database. The Australian Hydrographic Service, a department of the
Royal Australian Navy The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) is the navy, naval branch of the Australian Defence Force (ADF). The professional head of the RAN is Chief of Navy (Australia), Chief of Navy (CN) Vice admiral (Australia), Vice Admiral Mark Hammond (admiral), Ma ...
, said that mapping an island as a copyright trap—a practice in
cartography Cartography (; from , 'papyrus, sheet of paper, map'; and , 'write') is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality (or an imagined reality) can ...
to place a fictitious " trap street" on a map for the purpose of trapping potential copyright violators—would not have been standard practice with
nautical chart A nautical chart or hydrographic chart is a graphic representation of a sea region or water body and adjacent coasts or river bank, banks. Depending on the scale (map), scale of the chart, it may show depths of water (bathymetry) and heights of ...
s, and that its appearance on many contemporary maps may have simply been (and partly were) due to human error. The island was displayed on the
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Internet mapping service until 26 November 2012, when it was removed. On
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's default view, the island area is covered by black pixels, but the program's historical imagery feature displays a satellite image of the southern portion taken by DigitalGlobe on 3 March 2009, showing a darkened sea. On 29 November 2012, the
National Geographic Society The National Geographic Society, headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, is one of the largest nonprofit scientific and educational organizations in the world. Founded in 1888, its interests include geography, archaeology, natural sc ...
announced that it was officially striking Sandy Island from its maps. "The Geographer" at ''National Geographic'', Juan Valdes, said, "full evidence has finally been presented. 'Sandy Island' has now been officially stricken from all National Geographic map products".


See also

* Bermeja, a phantom island near the Yucatan peninsula. * Dougherty Island, a phantom island that remained on many maps until the early 20th century. * Listenbourg, an Internet meme of a fictional European country in the
Iberian Peninsula The Iberian Peninsula ( ), also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in south-western Europe. Mostly separated from the rest of the European landmass by the Pyrenees, it includes the territories of peninsular Spain and Continental Portugal, comprisin ...
* Los Jardines, also known as Los Buenos Jardines, a group of phantom islands first reported in 1529 off the eastern coast of Papua New Guinea.


References


External links


A full satellite image of the area by DigitalGlobe



No Land Ho: Sandy Island and the Age of Un-Discovery

Google Maps Showing Submerged Shape of Sandy Island
{{authority control Phantom islands Islands of New Caledonia Zealandia