What is this black patch on the ocean floor featured on Google Maps?
- By
- Aparna Patel
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- 29 Jul, 2023
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I think it’s Serrana Bank / Banco de Serrana, “a mostly underwater reef with 6 cays.” from Wikipedia
The Google imagery is misleading in that it looks like the entire area is an island. The color change is mainly due to the relatively shallow depth in the area with the edges being the reefs.
And, surprise! there used to be a US military base there.
If you zoom in, an atoll appears in that area:
Yet, this looks a little strange.
But also have a look at the group of four black spots north of your area. If you zoom in, the spots are suddenly filled with satellite images.
This is just a guess, but I think the usual satellite images are overlaid by a layer of ocean images, and this layer is made transparent where there are coast lines or other areas where satellite images would be better.
While the ocean layer is the same for almost all zoom levels, the satellite images are incomplete and not available for all zoom levels. And if there is no satellite image data, the hole in the ocean layer appears black.
(if someone wants to hide something there, it would be less suspicious to let it look like ocean)
EDIT:
While Google Maps does not show anything in its map layer there, OpenStreetMap contains much more detailed information, including the name of that place: Serrana bank
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Its nothing – its an artefact introduced by the Google Maps mapping system due to poor data, imagery or other issue.
There are loads of similar artefacts in the Google Maps product forum topic “Data Problems Compendium v 1110 January 19, 2012”
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Credit:stackoverflow.com‘