Point Nemo (oceanic pole of inaccessibility)

Point Nemo is the spot in the ocean that is farthest from any land. It lies in the South Pacific Ocean at roughly 48 degrees 52.6 minutes south and 123 degrees 23.6 minutes west. The nearest land is about 2,688 km away in three directions: Ducie Island's Pandora Islet to the north, Motu Nui near Easter Island to the northeast, and Maher Island off Antarctica to the south.

It is so remote that no regular ship or aircraft routes pass within 400 km. Sometimes the closest humans are astronauts on the International Space Station flying overhead. The exact coordinates are not known, because land surveys are not precise enough.

Name and discovery

The point was first worked out in 1992 by a Croatian survey engineer, Hrvoje Lukatela. In 2022 he recalculated it with newer map data. The name 'Nemo' is Latin for 'nobody' and also points to Captain Nemo, the submarine captain in Jules Verne's 1870 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas. Because the point is only a calculated position in open water, there is nothing to see there but waves.

An empty ocean

Point Nemo is also nearly lifeless. It lies inside the South Pacific Gyre, a huge circling current that blocks nutrients from reaching the area, and it is too far from land to receive nutrient run-off from coasts. The opposite point on Earth is in western Kazakhstan, about 50 km from the town of Shubarkuduk. In March 2024 the explorer Chris Brown became the first known person to reach all three proposed coordinates.

On the globe

Look for the empty South Pacific, far southeast of Easter Island and far from any coast.