Earth’s Zero Point: What Lies at Coordinates 0,0 in the Atlantic Ocean

1. How the Zero Coordinates Were Established
2. What is Located at Coordinates 0,0
3. What “Null Island” Really Is

What “Null Island” Looks Like and If It Has a Capital.

The point with coordinates 0° latitude and 0° longitude, where the Equator and the Prime Meridian intersect, is one of the most mysterious and symbolic places on our planet. Here is what lies behind the zero coordinates.

How the Zero Coordinates Were Established

The zero coordinates consist of two elements: the Equator (0° latitude) and the Prime Meridian (0° longitude). Their establishment happened based on different principles and at different times.

The Equator was defined naturally: an imaginary line, equidistant from the poles and perpendicular to the Earth’s axis of rotation. The Equator naturally divides the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

The situation with the Prime Meridian was more complicated. Until the late 19th century, there was no unified standard: every maritime nation used its own meridian for counting longitude. Great Britain used Greenwich, France used Paris, Spain used Cádiz, and Russia used the Pulkovo Observatory near St. Petersburg. This created chaos in navigation, cartography, and international trade, as the coordinates of the same location did not match in different systems.

The turning point came in 1884 at the International Meridian Conference in Washington. Following negotiations, delegates from most countries voted to adopt the Greenwich Meridian as the single prime meridian for the entire world. The key reasons for this decision were:

• The economic influence of the British Empire: at that time, 72% of world trade passed through London;
• Maritime dominance: the British fleet was the largest in the world;
• Existing prevalence: maps in the USA and many other countries already used Greenwich as the reference point.

Not all countries immediately accepted this decision. France, for example, abstained during the vote and continued to use the Paris Meridian on national maps until 1911, and for nautical charts until the 1920s.
The system of zero coordinates (0° latitude and 0° longitude) was only finally established in the 20th century with the development of international standards and technologies.

What is Located at Coordinates 0,0

Geographically, the point with coordinates 0° latitude and 0° longitude is located in the Atlantic Ocean, in the Gulf of Guinea, about 380 miles (ca. 612 km) off the coast of West Africa. This location, with a depth of about 4,940 meters, is not land.

However, in the digital world, the point is known by the humorous name “Null Island.” This name appeared in 2011 when cartographers from the Natural Earth project jokingly added a fictional island with an area of 1 m² at coordinates 0,0 to the geographic database. The goal: to create a marker for tracking geocoding errors.

Why do errors “settle” here? When a mapping program or navigation app cannot correctly determine an object’s location, for example due to a typo or a glitch, they may assign it default coordinates — 0,0. Thus, “Null Island” became a digital “collection point” for erroneous geodata.

Interestingly, the virtual island even has its own “infrastructure” in humorous descriptions: it is attributed a capital city called Meridian, a national domain .nu, and a currency called the “zero.”

What “Null Island” Really Is

Despite the absence of actual land, an important scientific object is located at this point — the oceanographic buoy “Station 13010 — Soul”.

It is part of the international PIRATA system, which collects data on water temperature, humidity, wind, and other climatic parameters. The data is used for climate studies and weather forecasting.

Thus, “Null Island” is a rare example of the combination of technical necessity with cartographic humor. At the same time, it remains an important tool in geographic information processing.