The Missing Island...!

This following article is something that you don't hear everyday. A complete island off the coast of Japan has gone missing, completely disappeared.

Japanese Island Disappears

Photo credit: Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP

Japanese officials have recently noticed that one of their islands off the northeast coast has vanished.

The tiny island was called Esanbe Hanakita Kojima. It was completely uninhabited and was likely eroded by wind and drift ice coming in from the Sea of Okhotsk. Normally, such a disappearance would be unimportant, but the islet had some value due to its positioning. It was an outlying island used by Japan to delineate its exclusive economic zone. Specifically, it was located west of a disputed region between Japan and Russia known as the Northern Territories.

The missing islet was brought to the attention of authorities by author Hiroshi Shimizu, who went to the nearby village of Sarufutsu to work on a book about Japan’s “hidden” islands.[9] Curiously, the locals hadn’t noticed its disappearance, even though the tiny strip of land was located 500 meters (1,640 ft) away. Fishermen avoided the area because it was marked as an undersea reef on navigation charts, and the Japanese coast guard last surveyed the island back in 1987.

While this may not seem to be an uncommon thing there, I am curious about exactly what happened to it? I'm just curious that way. I got this article from Listverse, of course.

Coffee out on the patio this morning!

Another Sea Mystery...!

Nothing seems to stir the imagination like a good sea mystery.

This is one you may not have heard about. Governments were involved, but that should come at no surprise. Here is another tale from the high seas.

Bermeja Island

Photo via Wikimedia

In the 1970s, Bermeja Island served as a marker for Mexico to set its 200-nautical-mile economic zone. Just about 20 years later, the island disappeared without a trace. Along with the island went important documents containing a treaty regarding major oil reserves within the island’s region. The disappearance of these documents immediately gave rise to conspiracy theories that the CIA had something to do with the vanishing island, ensuring that the US would get the oil. The main theory has it that the CIA actually blew up the island in order to expand the US’s economic zone.

The island is mentioned in a 1998 book about Mexican islands, disregarding the fact that a fishing expedition party already reported that they were unable to locate it the previous year. Bermeja Island was found on historical maps between 1535 and 1775, after which it also mysteriously seemed to vanish from any geographical records, right up until 1857, when a US map once again included it. The timelines vary according to different sources, with some saying that the Mexican government actually went looking for the island in 1997 but were unable to locate it.

Further research in 2009 also didn’t turn up any missing islands, stirring further confusion as to whether the island ever actually existed. The mystery of Bermeja Island seems likely to remain for a while.

You just have to love these sea mysteries, especially unsolved ones like this.

Coffee out on the patio this morning!