Discover more about Point Nemo, the place furthest from land on the entire planet. What exactly lives there and can it be explored?
By Geographical Contributorr
What is Point Nemo?
Point Nemo is the most isolated place on the planet, located 2688 kilometres (1670 miles) away from the nearest land. It is an pole of inaccessibility – a term used to refer to the most difficult regions to reach on land or sea – with the coordinates 48°52.6′ south latitude and 123°23.6′ west longitude.
Point Nemo can be found in the South Pacific Gyre – an area twice the size of North America. The gyre is a system of rotating currents comprising of The Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the Humbolt Current and the West Wind Drift. The nearest points of land are Maher Island, Ducie Island and Motu Nui.
The spot reaches depths of 4000 metres (13,000 feet), with its exact location first calculated by a survey engineer, Hrvoje Lukatela in 1992.
What lives there?
Humans might find themselves hard-pressed to find a way to Point Nemo, but that doesn’t mean the spot is desolate to marine life. Located near volcanic vents, many types of microbes live in Point Nemo’s waters, including bacteria that are able to survive in harsh conditions including low oxygen and high pressure levels. Species including tuna, swordfish and marlin also frequent the spot, as well as smaller crustaceans such as crabs.
Other, more damaging things have also made their way to Point Nemo. Although it is far away from any land, it still experiences the effects of plastic pollution. Seawater samples taken near Point Nemo were found to have up to 26 microplastic particles per cubic metre. Compared to the South China Sea – which was found to have 357 particles per cubic metre – this figure is low, but still highlights the far-reaching impact that human activities can have on the planet.
Human exploration of Point Nemo
The closest humans to Point Nemo are often astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) who orbit more than 250 miles above the planet.
Via air, the closest way to reach the spot is by taking Flight 30, a commercial flight from Auckland, New Zealand to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Over 6,564 miles (10,564 kilometres), the flight will pass over Point Nemo itself.
The Volvo Ocean Race – a huge sailing race spanning over 60,000 kilometres (more than 30,000 miles) – also passes through Point Nemo in the leg between Auckland in New Zealand and Itajai in Brazil.
In April 2024, British explorer Chris Brown made history as he became the the first person to ever swim at Point Nemo. Brown, who is currently aiming to visit all eight of the world’s poles of accessibility, sat sail from Chile on 12 March along with his son and crew of the Hanse Explorer on an expedition lasting eight days.
A spacecraft graveyard
An estimated 100–200 tons of space junk re-enters Earth each year, and some of this ends up at Point Nemo, thanks to its extreme isolation and its lack of proximity to major shipping lanes. The spot has been dubbed a ‘spacecraft graveyard’ for NASA and other space agencies, as more than 260 craft have been decommissioned there in the last 45 years.
This ranges from rocket parts to satellites, from a range of countries including Russia and Japan. Some of the most notable include Russia’s Mir space station or the ESA’s Automated Transfer Vehicle Jules Verne.
Smaller space junk can enter the Earth unnoticed, but larger spacecraft poses a greater issue as it can re-enter the Earth at high speeds, and often with debris that is on fire. Therefore, is crucial that such events occur far from land or people.
Even though it is so remote, New Zealand and Chilean authorities must be notified when a spacecraft will be decommissioned at Point Nemo to ensure that the area is entirely avoided.
Being far enough from land – and in some of the world’s most lifeless parts of the ocean – these decommissioned spacecraft can sit at the ocean floor for hundreds, if not thousands, of years and stay in relatively good condition.
NASA have announced it will decommission the International Space Station – measuring 109 metres (356 feet) – at Point Nemo in early 2031, where it will sink into the waters in what the agency dub as its ‘de-orbit‘. It will begin this de-orbiting process in 2026, when the space lab will be lowered slowly.
‘The Bloop’
The Bloop was a huge underwater sound – reported to be as loud as a blue whale – that occurred in 1997 in Point Nemo and was detected by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Various theories circulated about its origin, ranging from a marine mammal to a natural phenomenon.
Since The Bloop was recorded, researchers deployed hydrophones – underwater devices that detect sounds – across the Antarctic to study sea floor volcanoes and earthquakes. These hydrophones eventually became the inadvertent key to discovering the origin of The Bloop. The sounds recorded by hydrophones of icebergs splitting off from glaciers matched in their timing and frequency to the original recorded sound of The Bloop.
These events – when icebergs ‘calve’ from glaciers – are known as icequake. They are becoming increasingly more frequent as climate change causes the Earth’s sea temperatures to rise.
