A Reddit user taught the internet a little scrap about geography this week , as they discovered what looked like a fatal hole slap bang in the eye of the ocean . Having stumble across the topographical oddity while on a rather deep dive intoGoogle Earth , a user namedkokoblocksposted a screengrab on the subreddit /r / GoogleMaps taken from the midsection of the Pacific Ocean with the legend “ what the F*CK this looks nothing like an island ” .
So , what is it ?
Known asVostok Island , the puzzling tongue of coral is an atoll in the Southern Line Islands , Kiribati , in the Pacific Ocean . Theuninhabited islandsits 640 kilometers ( 400 miles ) from Tahiti and is home to just 0.3 straightforward kilometers ( 0.1 square miles ) of land . It was discovered in 1820 by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen , a Russian Antarctic explorer sailing on a ship named Vostok . Coveted for itsguano(then - lucrative poop deposits ) , it was nab by the US under the 1856 Guano Act and later on by Britain in 1873 , though nobody ever end up using it for anything .
Having been declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1979 , it ’s now home to untouched autochthonal flora , the best of all the Line Islands , as a part of Kiribati . This may explicate why the island appear so unusual on Google Earth , as if you zoom in on the island it almost looks as if it has beencensoredwith its fringe appearing dark light-green while the main body looks contraband . Satellite mental imagery sites do sometimes block certain images in this way , though it ’s also possible that the strange effect is simply a low - settlement mental image of a dim forest .
This latter account tie in nicely with the composition of the land , with beaches made up of coral sand and dust and no fresh water depositary on the mainland . The island is for the most part covered withPisonia treeswhich grow to heights of 30 metre ( 98 feet ) so tightly packed together that there ’s no distance for other works beneath them . The island ’s skin colour could therefore mull over a rather uniform mat of Pisonia treetops .
Far from a “ black maw ” , as some on Reddit described it , the unusual spit of nation is place to a surprising potpourri of fauna including several mintage of pinhead and frigate hiss , terns , squealer , skinks , and coconut crab louse , with green polo-neck occasionally visiting its beaches .
So , not that strange really – but there were some great alternative account on Reddit .
