Why cruise ships are sailing to a phantom destination that doesn’t appear on any map - CNN

- Null Island is a fictional destination at zero degrees latitude and longitude that has become an internet phenomenon.

- Some cruise lines now include stops at these coordinates, where passengers celebrate crossing an imaginary landmark in the middle of the ocean.

- Born from mapping errors where missing location data defaults to zero, it evolved into an inside joke among geospatial professionals.

It was a bright, clear April morning when Russell and Gail Lee visited Null Island for the first time.

The couple was aboard a 2023-2024 Viking World Cruise, about 380 miles off the coast of West Africa, approaching the coordinates at 0 degrees latitude and 0 degrees longitude, where the equator and prime meridian intersect.

Russell stood on the bridge with the captain, while Gail and a shipload of fellow cruisers gathered on the bow.

“Everyone had their geolocators out, counting down … 0.01… 0.005 … 0.0001,” Gail Lee tells CNN Travel. “We were all comparing phones. Whoever took a selfie closest to 0, 0 got bragging rights.”

When they learned the ship would make a “stop” at Null Island, the Lees, who work as enrichment lecturers on cruises, even offered to deliver scenic commentary.

The only problem? There was nothing to see but open ocean in every direction.

That’s because Null Island isn’t actually a place at all.

It’s a long-running inside joke born from mapping errors and embraced over the years by geospatial professionals — people who work with mapping software and location data.

Everything from Strava runs and Airbnb listings to hotels and crime reports tied to missing or miscoded location data has accumulated at these coordinates, giving rise to a phantom destination with a surprisingly devoted following.

And while still rare, a small number of cruise itineraries have begun passing through, adding to the fanfare.

Just a few weeks ago, Holland America announced plans to include Null Island as a stop on its 129-day round-the-world voyage in 2028, following an earlier stop on its 2024 trip. While Viking does not list any stops on upcoming itineraries, its ships in 2024 and 2025 visited the coordinates.

“There is no ‘there’ there,” says Russell Lee, who visited Null Island with Viking in both 2024 and 2025.

“There’s really nothing. Just open sea. But you’re some of the only people on Earth ever to visit, and that is really special.”

An island that doesn’t exist

Humans have long been drawn to invisible geographic markers — the equator, the Arctic Circle, the continental divide — and Null Island may be the internet age’s strangest version of that phenomenon.

But what is it, exactly?

It started popping up in the Geographic Information Systems community around 2008.

As geospatial data became more widely used — fueled by early platforms like Twitter (Now X) and Flickr — the placeholder point at 0, started as a technical issue.

He declared a new country governed by AI. He’s not sure it will end well

“One common screw-up with location data is that you accidentally leave it off,” Mike Migurski, a geospatial data specialist, tells CNN Travel.

At the time, Migurski was working at data visualization and cartography studio Stamen Design, where he began noticing a lot of data “floating around the Bight of Benin, where there shouldn’t be any.”

Incomplete or missing location data, he explains, defaults to “null” or 0. And those zeros — 0 degrees latitude, 0 degrees longitude — point to a remote spot in the Gulf of Guinea.

As a result, that’s where everyone’s unassigned data would wind up, he adds. And that’s how Null Island was born.

‘Like no place on Earth’

What began as something of a collection point for mapping errors soon evolved into a quirky fictional world built by those in the know.

In 2010, while working on a new set of map designs for GeoIQ, a location intelligence platform, Migurski helped give the island a visual identity.

Inspired by the popular video game “Myst,” he added a small island shape at 0, 0 as an Easter egg for others to find.

“It helped crystallize for people that it was something you could picture,” Migurski says. “We didn’t do any kind of explicit reference,” he continues. “It was just an ‘If you know, you know,’ thing.”

This traveler has flown business class 521 times and counting. Here’s when he thinks it’s worth it — and when it’s not