Sandy Island: The Phantom Land That Exists On Maps But Not On Earth
Have you ever been reminiscing about your hometown, or something similar, going on at length about a particular person, place, or thing, only to have someone rudely call you out and tell you the source of your memory wasn’t actually what you thought?
Wait, what? You say I already had this conversation with you when we stayed in that hut on Sandy Island? No, we didn’t, you dummy! Sandy Island doesn’t even exist, despite what that map you’re holding says.
Maria Seton, a geologist from the University of Sydney, investigated that Sandy Island mapping anomaly, which also goes by the name Sable Island, a small strip of land located – or not located – in the South Pacific, midway between Australia and New Caledonia.
The Sandy Island appeared on Google Earth, Google Maps, the Times Atlas of the World, and the weather maps of the research vessel Southern Surveyor.
Seton was aboard the Surveyor, riding over the Sandy Island spot when she and her crew “became suspicious when the navigation charts showed a depth of 4,600 feet in an area where our scientific maps and Google Earth showed the existence of a large island.”
At that point, I probably would have experienced vertigo strong enough to stun a fish.
For those hoping for Earthly conspiracies or feats of mystery on par with a David Copperfield performance, embrace your disappointment. In theory, it’s probably due to a years-old human error. The Southern Surveyor’s nautical maps don’t show Sandy Island.
Though Sandy Island was shown on all of these maps, they found nothing but deep ocean, over a mile deep, at the location where Sandy Island was supposed to be.
So how did this happen? Well that part isn’t so clear. This is a part of the ocean where there are a number of atolls and reefs just below the surface. There might have, at one point, been a body of land (of some type) at those relative coordinates. That would explain Sandy Island on some level.
When Sandy Island was first mapped in 1876 by the whaling ship Velocity they claimed to see “heavy breakers” and “sandy islets” in the area. Mapmakers likely mixed this up with another Sandy Island charted by Captain Cook in 1776. That one was about 260 miles away.
Once Sandy Island appeared on one set of maps, the mistake continued for maps after that without anyone actually double-checking. We will likely never know the original mistake, but it’s clear that it kept happening for more than 100 years after.
And it’s a good reminder that when it comes to mapmaking or even exploring our own world, not everything might be quite as accurate as we might think.
Plus, don’t even get us started on space travel. There’s a good chance we are going to “see” things out there that will change and change again for, well maybe forever.
