Mysterious Non-Existence Of Island Sandy

The History Mystery of Sandy Island, a non-existent island had featured on the world’s map for over a decade as being located near the French territory of New Caledonia between the Chesterfield Island and Nereus Reef in the eastern Coral Sea. The island was included on many maps as well as nautical charts in the late 19th century which gained great media and public attention in November 2012 when R/V Southern Surveyor which was an Australian surveyor ship that had passed through the South Pacific when the crew noticed an interesting discrepancy between their navigational maps and other atlases that were abroad.

 Every source that was checked showed a small speck known as Sandy Island located halfway between Australia and New Caledonia. The surveyor that had arrived at the site of Sandy Island in the middle of the night had left some of the crew and the captain worried that they might run around on land just beneath the surface though their depth sounding equipment showed ocean floor that was thousands of feet below indicating that the island did not face any recent volcanic scene or never existed at all.

No Trace of Sandy Island

A team of explorers who had been traveling to a remote island off the coast of Australia made an unusual discovery. There was no trace of the tiny island known as Sandy Island which appears on all maps and atlas in the world.

The Island was then quickly removed from several maps and data sets inclusive of the National Geographic society and Google Maps.When viewed from Google Earth, Sandy Island appeared like dark, silver tantalising amid the shimmering vastness of the Pacific Ocean but when marine scientist arrived at that island in the Coral Sea off Australia they were surprised for something that did not exist. There was just the blue Ocean instead of sandy outcrop with palm trees that were supposed to be there,

An Enigmatic Island

Maria Seaton, the Australian scientist, a geologist at Sydney University had started a voyage to study plate tectonic and had spotted the enigmatic island which lay along the route.

Though the island appeared on the Google Earth map, there were several discrepancies and no images of it. Moreover it had also featured on the reliable world coastline database for the past twelve years but there seems to be no sign of it on their sea chart.

This has led to a lot of speculation as to why do every map and atlas indicates a place known as Sandy Island. Some sources indicate that Sandy Island was approximately 60 sq. miles in size somewhat the same area as Manhattan meaning that it would have been an insignificant piece of land but the mystery lies in how did it manage to get on the maps and atlas.

According to a theory, the island seemed to have been placed by a cartographer on purpose who tried to prevent the copying of his maps. In the past it was not unusual for mapmakers to deliberately put mark on their works in order that they could identify copies made by others and there could be a possibility that Sandy Island could have been just another mark.