The Farthest You Can Get From Land
Somewhere in the South Pacific there's a patch of ocean that beats every other spot on Earth for one strange title: farthest possible point from any coastline. It's called Point Nemo, and it sits at roughly 48°52.6′S, 123°23.6′W. Nobody lives anywhere near it, because there's nothing to live on out there — just open water stretching in every direction.
The nearest scraps of land are three tiny, separate places, and each one sits about 2,688 kilometers away. To the north is Ducie Island, part of the Pitcairn Islands. To the northeast is Motu Nui, a small island next to Easter Island. To the south, buried in Antarctic ice, is Maher Island near Marie Byrd Land. Draw a triangle between those three points and Point Nemo sits right in the middle, equally far from all of them.
Closer to Astronauts Than to Anyone on Earth
Point Nemo isn't just far from land, it's far from people, period. No shipping lanes or flight paths pass anywhere near it; the nearest regular traffic route is more than 400 kilometers away. That means for long stretches, the closest human beings to this spot aren't on any boat at all. They're astronauts aboard the International Space Station, orbiting hundreds of kilometers overhead.
The water itself is oddly empty too. Point Nemo sits inside the South Pacific Gyre, a slow, swirling current system that traps the area in place. That circulation keeps nutrients and coastal runoff from ever reaching the surrounding water, leaving this patch of ocean far less alive than most.
Named After a Fictional Submarine Captain
Point Nemo wasn't discovered by an explorer stumbling across it by boat. It was calculated on paper in 1992 by Hrvoje Lukatela, a Croatian survey engineer who worked out exactly where the ocean's most remote point had to be.
For the name, Lukatela reached back to his childhood. He called it Nemo, Latin for "nobody," as a nod to Captain Nemo, the reclusive submarine commander from Jules Verne's 1870 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, a book Lukatela loved as a kid. It's a fitting tribute: a fictional captain who wanted nothing to do with land, honored by a real point in the ocean that has none nearby.
Where Old Spacecraft Go to Die
Because it's so empty and so far from shipping lanes, Point Nemo has become useful in an unexpected way: it's a dumping ground for spacecraft. When satellites and space stations are decommissioned, engineers often steer them to crash right here during re-entry, so no falling debris comes anywhere near a populated area.
Dozens of retired spacecraft already rest at the bottom of the ocean near Point Nemo. The most famous crash is still to come — the International Space Station itself is scheduled to be deliberately sent into this same patch of water when its mission ends in 2031.
