"48°52.6 South, 123°23.6 West" are the coordinates of Point Nemo. It is really only a theoretical point on the charts but symbolically it so important. Scientists have dubbed it "the maritime pole of inaccessibility". The nearest land is 2,688 kilometres away. These are Ducie Island, an uninhabited atoll that is part of the Pitcairn Islands, Motu Nui Island near Easter Island, and Maher Island in Antarctica.
This point has only been known and named since 1992 when a Canadian engineer of Croatian origin, Hroje Lukatela, managed to determine it thanks to clever mathematical calculations. He took the name "Nemo", inspired by Jules Verne's famous Captain Nemo in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, a sailor who did not like to be around humans.
A "biological desert"
The humans closest to the sailors at Point Nemo are actually the inhabitants of the International Space Station, 400 km above the surface of the globe! The place is also popular with space agencies including NASA. This is where they land their satellite or space debris. Being far from any inhabited land, it is indeed the ideal place to minimize the risk of collisions or damage.
It is a "biological desert.” Marine life is very limited. As all land is thousands of kilometres away, there is no real nutrients such as are normally transported by rivers or soil runoff and which participate in the marine food chain. And so life forms are very rare, except for microorganisms and a few species of fish.
The Paul Meilhat precedent
It is also a special moment for the sailors of the Vendée Globe. Because the other consequence of the remoteness of the land is the difficulty of rescue by emergency services. It would take more than 15 days for a boat to get there. Paul Meilhat reflects that during his first Vendée Globe, in 2016, it was near Point Nemo that he discovered that his keel ram was cracked, forcing him to retire.
