British Explorer Is First Known Person To Reach Remote Ocean Site

Explorer and businessman Chris Brown has successfully completed an expedition to Point Nemo—the farthest place from any landmass on Earth—and become the first person to be in documented doing so.

Brown set sail in the early hours of March 12 on the expedition vessel Hanse Explorer with a crew composed of sailors and a videographer. On their way to Point Nemo, Brown wrote on his website that, “It’s hard to describe just how remote Point Nemo is. Yes, I can throw stats at you, but it’s still hard to imagine sailing for 10 days and not seeing anything else apart from sea all the way to the horizon for so long.”

Named after the submariner Captain Nemo from Jules Verne’s novel '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,' Point Nemo is the oceanic pole of inaccessibility and is located somewhere in the Southern Pacific Ocean.

If a person found themselves in Point Nemo, they would be far away from any landmass in any direction. The closest land is the Ducie Island, part of the Pitcairn Islands, to the north (2,688km), Motu Nui to the northeast and Maher Island to the south. The coordinates of Point Nemo are 48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W.

The closest humans to Point Nemo are usually the astronauts on board the International Space Station, 415 km away. The ocean floor is around 4,000 m at Point Nemo and the average water temperature is 7.2°C. Various nations use Point Nemo as a dumping ground for their space debris, like the Russian Mir space station.

Upon reaching the location, Brown came up with the idea of ‘floating’ at the pole and holding maritime flags which spelt out the word N.E.M.O. He wrote that about 15:00 local time he and other crew members donned wetsuits, jumped aboard a rigid and inflatable boat (RIB) and set off for the exact coordinates of Point Nemo. He and his crew members became the first known people to swim at the site.

Brown, who hails from Yorkshire in England, said he won’t claim the mantle of being the first person to arrive precisely at Point Nemo but “what we did was remove any doubt as to if someone had been there.”

The adventurer has previously completed trips to the centre of the African continent, Antarctica’s pole of inaccessibility and South America’s pole of inaccessibility.