Scientists Find South Pacific Island 'Sandy' Does not Exist

A scientific expedtion has revealed that an island in the South Pacific which is marked on online mapping systems, actually does not exist.

CNN reported that the island was thought to have been inbetween Australia and New Caledonia and was roughly the size of Manhattan. It is called Sandy Island on Google Maps and Sable Island on Other online maps, reported CNN. Sabin Zahirovic, Ph.D student and a member of the research team of the exbedition said to CNN, "We saw this mysterious island on all the scientific maps and weather maps but not on this one navigational chart that was on our ship. So we decided to go see if it was actually there."

The RV Southern Surveyor was the boat of the expedition and was led by Dr. Maria Seton of the University of Sydney. The team found nothing in the area that the island was supposed to be. The team arrived at the islands location at night because of a navigation error and originally planned to get there during the day.

Zahirovic said to AFP, "It's on Google Earth and other maps so we went to check and there was no island. We're really puzzled. It's quite bizarre. How did it find its way onto the maps? We just don't know, but we plan to follow up and find out."

Australia's Hydrographic Service said to the BBC that its appearance on scientific maps and Google Earth could be due to human error.

"All the scientific cartography relies on these maps, and numerical simulations of waves and currents depend on size of these land forms," said Zahirovic to CNN."It just goes to show the oceans are so underexposed. It's actually really shocking that we haven't not found more islands."