South Pacific Sandy Island 'proven not to exist' | Hacker News Reader

South Pacific Sandy Island 'proven not to exist'

bbc.co.uk

71 pointsglennwiz46 comments

"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)

    Sandy Island
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Ah, how I hate you dynamic ads...

I'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"

"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 BBC Two 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

Guessing 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?

Sea 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.

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.

Or, y'know go out there to map the place to get better and more accurate maps.

If it has an island that isn't there, it's not a good sign that your maps of the area are accurate.

The island now has a wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Island_(New_Caledonia). Created today.

In 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.

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.

1. Elon Musk launches rockets from the area and talks about the mysterious Hyperloop

2. Islands begin to disappear

Conclusions?

You know too much.

Nice knowing you [Deleted]

"...some map makers intentionally include phantom streets to prevent copyright infringements..."

Wait, what?

It'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

Land 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.

The 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."

It 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.

Its actually more devious than that. Facts are not copyrightable since they are not creative works; locations of streets and phone number listings are both not copyrightable. On the other hand, fictional streets or phone numbers are copyrightable so if someone copies a trap street they are infringing when they otherwise wouldn't be if the map was accurate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street

Yup.

Melway is a company that makes excellent street directories for all the major cities in Australia.[1] It came out a while ago that on every single page, there are intentional errors that would help catch someone copying their maps. There was a phone box marked on my street that didn't exist, and a friend's house was next to a street that didn't exist.

It gained some attention a while back because it could turn into a safety issue - i.e. I rely on the map to tell me where I can find a phone box to call emergency services. They downplayed it.

[1]http://www.melway.com.au/

It's entirely likely that it's just outdated data. However, it's not so much a part of a trend of disappearing phone booths, TUSMA is providing government money to Telstra for keeping about 20,000 phone booths active such that all Australians have reasonable access to one.

When the safety issue blew up they asked the company about it and they confirmed the "mistakes" are intentional to catch copiers.

I checked the local Ausway map on street-directory.com.au and the phone booth that's on there is actually there, so based on a massive set of two data points and some intuitising in applying typical rates of intentional mistakes applicable to other data, like streets, it's probably only a few phone booths that are intentional mistakes.

Isn'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.

Yeah, 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...

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...

That 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) and turn up in dictionaries, maps, charts and other reference works.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry for a long list, including fictitious german politician Jakob Maria Mierscheid in most official parliamentary listings.

> 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]

"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.

> copywrite

'Copyright', as it governs the right to copy.

Interesting 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.

There are apparently many other "phantom islands": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_island

What 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.

Its 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]https://browse.digitalglobe.com/imagefinder/navigator.do?nav...

[3]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_N...

[5]http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/view/search?q=List_N...

[6]http://blog.geogarage.com/2012/11/south-pacific-sandy-island...

Not sure what you mean about SHOM?

Service Hydrographique et Océanographique de la Marine

http://www.shom.fr/

Sorry, I should have been clearer. What did you think the fact that their maps did not show this island mean?

That the only mapmaking authority to whom this island would actually matter is France (SHOM). Since it's in their territorial water and it also would extend their territorial water by being an actual Island. So it's in the very interest of France to have a clear idea what belongs to them and what not, also it's their responsibility to provide as accurate as feasible navigational charts to ensure the safety of ships which travel through their waters.

Look at the french charts featured at geogarage, the post has added a few more SHOM charts for reference which show no Island.

http://blog.geogarage.com/2012/11/south-pacific-sandy-island...

So what does it mean?

Basically one would only need to blame Australia for the lack of funding or interest to ground-truth and update their issued charts outside of their territorial waters. The easiest explanation would be a lack of communication between Australian and French nautical mapping authorities. Second to that the Australian authorities didn't feel the need to do their own mapping by means of actively acquiring of information on the area by satellite, plane or ship for civil applications.

Insert Apple maps joke here

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