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South Pacific Sandy Island 'proven not to exist'
- ricardobeat 14y agoSandy Island Get Deals & Reviews for Hotels near Sandy Island www.tripadvisor.com/AttractionHotels Ah, how I hate you dynamic ads...
- nsns 14y ago"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)
- sbirchall 14y agoIsn't this a standard method for a 'poor-mans copywrite' in cartography?
- ManAboutCouch 14y agoThe creation of so called 'Trap Streets' is well known - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Copyright_Easter_Eggs 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 14y agoYeah, 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...
- solarexplorer 14y agoExcept 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...
- heyitsnick 14y agoThat was my first thought, although i'm not sure why you refer to them as 'poor-mans copyright', seems like a pretty smart way of adding an additional layer of protection in cases of plagiarism dispute. These are also referred to as mountweasel's or 'nihil articles' (http://www.omniglot.com/blog/?p=6187 http://www.omniglot.com/blog/?p=6187) and turn up in dictionaries, maps, charts and other reference works. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry for a long list, including fictitious german politician Jakob Maria Mierscheid in most official parliamentary listings.
- sbirchall 14y ago> although i'm not sure why you refer to them as 'poor-mans copyright' just a misunderstanding, I was searching my brain for the phrases you mention and out popped 'poor mans copyright'[1]. You are indeed correct this is a totally different thing and "Mountweasels" (fictitious artifacts) are a very sound method of establishing the originality of certain work... I have to wonder if "Mountweasels" hasn't krept into our language in just such a manner though! [1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_man%27s_copyright http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_man%27s_copyright]
- mistercow 14y ago"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."
- NelsonMinar 14y agoAmazing what you learn if you read the article.
- derleth 14y ago> copywrite 'Copyright', as it governs the right to copy.
- yuokool12 14y agoWhat happens if you zoom in on the island using google maps?
- TillE 14y agoIt'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 http://goo.gl/maps/NUWhA
- paulgb 14y agoI assume it's blacked out because their geospatial data shows that it's land but they don't have satellite data to cover it.
- timeshifter 14y agoThat's an awfully specific area to not have satellite data for...
- mxfh 14y agoIts 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/version2.2.0/ http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/shorelines/data/gshhs/version2.... [2]https://browse.digitalglobe.com/imagefinder/navigator.do?navAction=PANDRAG&x=-41&y=-26&width=636&height=434 https://browse.digitalglobe.com/imagefinder/navigator.do?nav... [3]http://landsatlook.usgs.gov/ 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_No=1494.068&showFirstDetail=1 http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/view/search?q=List_N... [5]http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/view/search?q=List_No=5023.062&showFirstDetail=1 http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/view/search?q=List_N... [6]http://blog.geogarage.com/2012/11/south-pacific-sandy-island-proven-not.html http://blog.geogarage.com/2012/11/south-pacific-sandy-island...
- andyjohnson0 14y agoI 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.
- andyjohnson0 14y agoThe island now has a wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Island_(New_Caledonia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Island_(New_Caledonia). Created today.
- personlurking 14y agoI'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.
- dagw 14y agoFlying 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"
- personlurking 14y ago"I see", said the blind man to his deaf wife. Especially true if you've seen BBC's South Pacific (...several times over). Intro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3gtTicceg0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3gtTicceg0 BBC Two http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jq11g http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jq11g ______ Edit: The initial "nonsense verse" I used made me curious so I looked it up and that's where I found the ending of one version of the phrase. "I see", said the blind man to his deaf wife as their dog with no legs got up and ran away. He pissed in the wind and said "It all comes back to me now." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonsense_verse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonsense_verse
- aes256 14y agoGuessing 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 14y agoSea 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.
- SuperChihuahua 14y ago1. Elon Musk launches rockets from the area and talks about the mysterious Hyperloop 2. Islands begin to disappear Conclusions?
- cafard 14y agoIn 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.
- gonzo 14y agoInsert Apple maps joke here
- discountgenius 14y ago"...some map makers intentionally include phantom streets to prevent copyright infringements..." Wait, what?
- chollida1 14y agoIt'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 14y agoLand 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 14y agoThe 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."
- rmc 14y agoIt doesn't prevent copyright infringement, so much as be able to detect copyright infringment after the fact. They are called 'trap streets'. They aren't just streets, but kinks in roads or rivers, churchs that aren't there. This way, if someone copies your map, you can prove they copied you. If your map was totally accurate, then they (the copier) could claim that they went out into the world and surveyed it. If they include your trap street that only exists on your map, and not reality, then it must be a copy.
- greenyoda 14y agoThere are apparently many other "phantom islands": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_island
- ghshephard 14y agoInteresting 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.