Enigmatic photo
Internet puzzle about “black hole” in the middle of the sea has been solved
This picture on GoogleMaps confused many people
© GoogleMaps
A man discovered an unusual object on GoogleMaps that he couldn’t explain. He asked for advice on the Internet – now the secret is out.
The object is very dark, almost black. It has a roughly triangular shape with rounded edges and is framed by a white border. And: It is in the middle of the ocean. What is this about? The question was also asked by a man who discovered this mysterious “hole” in the sea on GoogleMaps.
The man, who is using the username “Kokoblocks” on the online platform Reddit, shared a photo of the mysterious object there and asked if anyone knew what it was. Numerous exciting speculations quickly gathered: Was it the island from the series “Lost”? A secret military base? Is it actually a hole in the sea, a kind of volcanic crater? Or even the Bermuda Triangle? This is geographically far away, however, in the Caribbean – the GoogleMaps object, on the other hand, between New Zealand and Hawaii, in the middle of the seemingly endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean.
Vostok Island from afar
© GoogleMaps
Is it a volcano or a military base?
“My first thought was that something was censored there. It makes no sense that a natural formation is so black, especially in a small atoll in shallow water,” writes a user on the net. But finally someone knew the answer – and it should disappoint all avid conspiracy theorists: It’s just an island, despite the strange color and unusual shape. The uninhabited island was discovered by Russian sailors around 200 years ago and named Vostok Island; today it belongs to the island republic of Kiribati.
Seen from above, the island looks so black because it is extremely densely overgrown with pisonia trees, which can grow up to 30 meters high and displace almost all other vegetation. So the black is actually a dark green. People don’t live on the small island, apart from trees and corals there isn’t much here. What makes the island special, however, is its location, lonely in the middle of the sea, far from any major human settlement. Here you can find Vostok Island on GoogleMaps.
Sources: Reddit, “Daily Mail”, Google Maps