Discover more about vanishing islands across the globe, and why some ‘phantom islands’ have entirely disappeared from maps
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Around the world, our maps are littered with islands – there are between 200,000 to 670,000. Some, such as Pitcairn and Tristan da Cunha, are isolated and remote, thousands of kilometres from the nearest neighbour; some are vast land masses in their own right, such as Greenland and New Guinea, and some are teeming with people, such as Singapore and Manhattan.
But there are many islands that have completely vanished from maps, either through being washed over by rising tides, or revealed as non-existent after later voyages prove they aren’t there.
Read on to discover five of these islands and why exactly they no longer feature on world maps…
Perlamutrovy Island, Russia
Climate change – and its resulting warming temperatures – have caused the Perlamutrovy Island in the Russian archipelago of Franz Josef Land to disappear. With a diameter of 1.5 kilometres, its highest point was 22 metres above sea level.
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It was first noticed as missing back in 2017, when Russian researchers failed to find it on satellite photos. In the summer of 2018, hydrographers from the Russian Northern Fleet confirmed the island as vanished during an expedition.
However, in recent times, new islands have been found in the area. In total, 12 new islands, one new strait, 14 new headlands and six bays have been discovered, according to the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources.
East Island, Hawaii
A remote island made of gravel and sand – sitting atop a coral reef – vanished back in 2018 after sitting in the path of the devastating Category 3 Hurricane Walaka. The 11-acre island, estimated to be one to two thousand years old, was about half a mile long and 400ft wide, making it the second largest island in the French Frigate Shoals.
The island was home to several important species, such as the critically endangered Hawaiian monk seal, green sea turtles and albatrosses.
Around half of all Hawaiian green sea turtles buried their eggs in the sands of East Island, and one out of every seven Hawaiian monk seals was also born there. Some experts dubbed the island ‘the most important single islet for sea turtle nesting’.
Until 1952, East Island was home to the US Coast Guard radar station.
Lochachara Island, India
Located in the Hooghly River and part of the Sundarban delta, Lochachara Island began shrinking back in the 1990s and was just two metres above sea level. It is one of the first inhabited islands to disappear under the sea, with residents forced to relocate to neighbouring islands – such as Ghoramara – without documents or property deeds.
According to experts, there are now a dozen ‘vanishing islands’ in the area that may disappear in the coming years, with a combined population of 70,000 people.
Lochachara was once home to 10,000 people, and was first noticed to have disappeared after scientists observed satellite imagery.
In the last two decades, four islands – Lohachara, Bedford, Kabasgadi and Suparibhanga – have been permanently flooded, leading to 6,000 families becoming homeless.
Sandy Island, New Caledonia
This island was first discovered by a whaling ship in 1876, and appeared on maps for more than a century. In 1979, several aerial reconnaissance missions flew to the ste, which concluded the island did not exist. It was deleted from nautical publications via a notice to mariners in the same year.
Back in 2012, a team of researchers sailed to the exact location and still found nothing but open ocean.
There are several reasons to explain why Sandy Island may have been mistakenly spotted centuries ago. One is due to a positioning error at sea (common in the 19th century), while another posits debris from an underwater volcano nearby may have took the appearance of a small island.
Solomon Islands
Five uninhabited islands in the Solomon Islands – an archipelago of more than 900 islands – completely disappeared under water in the last seven decades. These islands ranged in size from 2.5 to 12.4 acres. In addition to this, a further six islands have lost more than 20 per cent of their total surface area.
A study, led by a group of Australian scientists, used aerial and satellite imagery of 33 islands between 1947 and 2014 to track changes in land surface areas. Such changes have been attributed to general sea level rises catalysed by climate change, as well as an intensification of trade winds brought about by a combination of a warming atmosphere and natural cycles.
In the last 20 years, sea levels in the Solomon Islands have risen by 0.28 to 0.39 inches annually, three times to global average. According to the IPCC, global levels will rise by 0.2 inches in the second half of the century.
