An uncanny, dark mass of an island on Google Earth made waves on social media as some users went wild with their imagination and suggested it was a “censored” destination.

Conspiracy theorists couldn’t help themselves speculate about the island, considering Google has been known to blur out sensitive locations including prisons, military bases, nuclear facilities, and other critical infrastructure sites.

A Redditor who studies Google Maps stumbled upon a mysterious “black hole” in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and no one may agree that it is such. Reddit user “kokoblocks” posted a photo of the mysterious anomaly on a Google Maps subreddit, asking the community what it is: “What is it? It doesn’t look like an island at all. “

Many Reddit users share their opinions about the true nature of the picture, which ranged from answers posted just for laughs to actual logical explanations.

“Obviously Hollow Earth entrance. Duh,” one user replied, referring to the Hollow Earth theory that says the Earth is, well, hollow.

“Looks censored for some reason,” one user said with other users concurring.

“My first thought was that it’s censored,” another user replied. “It wouldn’t make sense for a natural formation to be black like that in such a shallow, small atoll/island.

While some folks online offered satirical theories, one internet sleuth provided additional information on the tiny piece of land. “It’s an island called Vostok Island that belongs to the glorious Republic of Kiribati, what you see as black is actually very dark green, it’s a very dense forest made up of Pisonia trees.”

“What you see as black is actually very dark green,” explained one in-the-know Redditor. “It’s a very dense forest made up of Pisonia trees.”

‘AWM’ added:

The black hole in the ocean (the island of Vostok) is about 4,000 miles east of Australia and about 1,500 miles west of Hawaii. The island is part of a group of islands known as the southern Line Islands, which include Malden, Starbuck, Flint, and Caroline, according to the Daily Mail.

The first European discovery of Vostok was in 1820 by a group of rough Russian explorers. These men named the island after the ship they were sailing during their voyage into the Pacific Ocean’s southern waters. However, the United States claimed the island in 1856 because it was filled with lots of guano. This bat manure is a popular fertilizer and was a valuable product back during the years surrounding the Civil War. However, the island was later given to the British. It then became associated with Kiribati in 1979, which was an independent country. Vostok has later declared a wildlife sanctuary and has been protected ever since.

In 2009, marine conservationist Enric Sala led an expedition to Vostok to study its fish populations and document its natural resources.

This is not the first time the online community has discovered a “strange” island. According to the Daily Mail, Joleen Vultaggio – a woman in the state of Michigan, USA – shared pictures of a rather strange country that she discovered on Google Maps in February.

Joleen Vultaggio marked the coordinates of the anthropomorphic island and shared them with members of a Facebook group that specializes in strange discoveries on Google Maps. This island was later identified as Ouvea (or Uvea), the northernmost of the Loyalty Islands, a French overseas special zone in the southwestern Pacific.

Source: AWM