Want To Get Away From It All? Go To ‘Point Nemo’

In world’s oceans, you cannot go further from any land than ‘Point Nemo’ before you start coming back. Point Nemo is exactly 2688.22 kilometers (or 1,450 nautical miles) from the nearest land and there’s no other point in ocean that far from the land. It’s named after the fictional character, captain Nemo from Jules Verne’s novel “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” published in 1870.

Image credits: noaa.gov
Image credits: noaa.gov

On a planet such as ours with complex landmass and ocean distribution having thousands of islands, some smaller than the size of a football field, finding such point can be challenging. Further such point should be farthest not from one but three coastlines to fulfil the criteria of being farthest from ‘any land’. Fortunately with modern day computational power at hands, finding such a point is not that difficult.

point_Nemo

Point Nemo with a geographical coordinates of s48:52:31.748 w123:23:33.069, is 2688 km away from the following three coastlines:

  1. Ducie Island
  2. Motu Noi
  3. Maher Island

Ducie Island is a non-inhabited small C-shaped strip of land with a diameter of barely two kilometers. Motu Noi is also small piece of land (less than 100 meter across) but it’s near to a well-known bigger island: Rapa Nui or better known as ‘Easter Island’. It’s the Rapa Nui Island where you see those giant stone monolith statues; Moai. The 20km wide volcanic island, Rapa Nui, has its own airport and is a developed tourist destination. The third one, Maher Island is a small piece of land on the outskirts of a larger Siple Island which is the part of Antarctica.

Moai of Ahu Akivi

So just in case if you’re stuck somewhere around Point Nemo and decide to come back, your best option is to head North towards Easter Island (of course 2688 km away), appreciate the historical Moai and get a plane back home. [via globecalc]