A lost Pacific island puzzle Solved

A lost Pacific island puzzle Solved, A researcher from New Zealand on Monday claimed to have solved the mystery of the lost island of the South Pacific, though displayed in Google Earth and maps of the world, blame the Japanese whaling ship in 1876.

Mysterious lands in the Coral Sea was shown as an island of Sandy in Google Earth and Google map, and supposed to be halfway between Australia and New Caledonia, which was conquered by France.

Times Atlas of the World identifies as Sable Island, but according to scientists that Australia did a search last month, the island was not found.

Curious, Shaun Higgins, a researcher at the Auckland Museum, began to investigate and claimed that the island never existed, with the Japanese whaling ship that became the source of his error.

"As far as I know, the island was filmed by Japanese whaling ship Velocity," said Higgins told ABC radio, adding that the ship's captain reported a series of "Sandy island".

"My Assumption is that they are only noted the danger at the time. They may record the reefs in the lowlands or think that they see a coral. They could be in the wrong place. All of that is possible, "he said.

"But what we have is a form of dotted on the map are recorded at that time and seems to be just copied from time to time."

News of the unseen Island sparked debate in social media, with a few tweets pointed out that Sandy is also on Yahoo Maps and Bing Maps.

During the discussion, www.abovetopsecret.com became fierce with one user claimed that the Hydrographic Office has confirmed that France was indeed an island of ghosts and should be removed from the map in 1979.

Google told AFP in the past month that it always welcomes feedback on the map and "continue to explore ways to integrate new information from our users and partners in Google Maps".

Sandy Island seems to have now been removed from the map.