Sandy Island (Ile de Sable) shows up on Google Earth and many nautical charts and world maps – but not on all of them. The 60 square mile phantom island is located by Google Earth about halfway between Australia and French New Caledonia in the Coral Sea, but it has been “un-discovered” twice in the last few years.
“The case that the island does not exist was first made by some amateur radio enthusiasts on a DX-pedition in April 2000. They noted that the island was presented on some maps but it was not presented on others such as the 1999 Times Atlas of the World, 10th Edition. A discovery of the absence was again made on 22 November 2012 by Australian scientists aboard the RV Southern Surveyor studying plate tectonics in the area. During the voyage, they noticed a discrepancy between different maps and decided to sail to the supposed location to investigate. No island was found and navigation charts showed a depth of 1,400 metres (4,600 ft). They claim to have sailed through the claimed island and found that ‘The ocean floor actually didn’t ever get shallower than 1,300 meters below the wave base…’” (source).
Sandy Island has been depicted for at least 116 years on various maps and publications, including earlier editions of The Times Atlas of the World; conversely, many maps have not featured it (see “Maps of Sandy Island Through History”). “Local weather maps placed it 700 miles from the coast of Brisbane, Australia. Many scientific maps, as well as weather maps used by the Southern Surveyor, an Australian maritime research vessel, also placed the island there, according to Maria Seton, the chief geologist at the University of Sydney who led the expedition. ‘Somehow this error has propagated through to the world coastline database, from which a lot of maps are made,’ she said”…”It raises all kinds of conspiracy theories,” expedition member Steven Micklethwaite said, adding that the CIA is among the sources of the world coastline database. “It reminded me of the hypernatural island in the “Lost” TV series” (source).
Wikipedia makes the distinction between phantom islands, lost lands, and vanishing islands: “Phantom islands are islands that were believed to exist, and appeared on maps for a period of time (sometimes centuries) during recorded history, but were later removed after they were proved to be nonexistent. In contrast, lost lands are islands or continents believed by some to have existed during prehistory, often associated with ancient myths and legends; and vanishing islands are islands that are submerged during high tide” (source).
While phantom and lost islands may be the result of fabrication, human error, or even optical illusions, vanishing islands are very real and pose serious questions. New Moore Island (known as South Talpatti in Bangladesh) in the Bay of Bengal was located in a geostrategic position at the mouth of the Hariabhanga River, the disputed boundary between India and Bangladesh. But New Moore is no more—it disappeared in 2010 due to sea level rise, and with it went many of the territorial claims of both countries, not to mention claims to oil and natural gas thought to exist in the region.
Rising sea levels also threaten many other islands, such as Kiribati (formerly the Gilbert Islands) and Tuvalu in the Pacific: “One may think of Kiribati as a small country, but because its islands are well scattered over a large section of the Pacific, it has a maritime exclusive economic zone approximately the size of India. That’s a lot of fish, seabed mining rights, shipping lanes, and geostrategic positioning (it’s not an accident that China had a much-valued base in Kiribati). As islands submerge, seabed rights could be lost, valuable and culturally important territorial fishing grounds could pass in to international waters, and, in the most extreme case – say if Tuvalu is submerged and evacuated – there is the prospect of the legal extinction of an entire country. If Tuvalu is no longer above sea level, and ‘no island, no claim’ is invoked, Tuvalu could face not only losing its fishing grounds, but cease to exist as a state, thus losing its seat in the United Nations and having its citizens become, literally, stateless” (source).
While many islands are disappearing, many others continue to be discovered. A study published in the Journal of Coastal Research in 2011 added 657 islands to the world’s list of barrier islands, and other islands have popped up in relatively recent years, due to volcanism, erosion, glacial retreat, or other mechanisms – e.g., Anak Krakatau near Indonesia in 1930, Surtsy Island near Iceland in 1967, and Landsat Island near Labrador (and named after the satellite that discovered it) in 1976.
Article by Bill Norrington
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