What where they looking for when they found this?!?

2. Sandy Island. "Sandy Island", a nonexistent island appearing on maps near the northwest of New Caledonia, has stumped cartographers for over a century. After appearing on maps for 100 years as a "phantom location", this strange location was finally photographed by Google Earth - simply displaying a black polygonal void, about the size of Manhattan. The Australian researchers who found the black mass alerted scientists - eventually sailing to the location in 2012 only to find open water and emptiness instead of the solid ground they expected. Now thought to simply be human error or possibly just a pumice raft - it's hard not to suspect that Google may actually be in on the joke.