September 30, 2009

Could this Airstrip be any more Isolated?

I'm back to wandering through Google maps, checking out whatever corner of the map intrigues me at the moment.

So I got to thinking about an old nature show describing the way the Hawaiian island chain is the result of a tectonic plate drifting over a hot spot in the mantle. Google long ago added sonar maps of the sea floor to their offerings. Today I just got to wandering along the submerged chain that never quite broke free of the surface when I panned across this.

An airstrip on a corral reef west-northwest of Hawaii.

Now the existence of that airstrip is going to bother me until I figure out when they decided to scrape up enough mud to break the surface, and what it was used for.

UPDATE: So, entirely too much surfing at work has answered my question. It's French Frigate Shoals Airport on Tern Island in the French Frigate Shoals, part of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. And now I have a new site to chew up my time for a while.

Posted in Weird Wide Web by: Will at 11:26 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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