Chris Brown of Britain has become the first person in history to reach Point Nemo, the oceanic pole of inaccessibility in the Pacific Ocean. The Point Nemo is located in the southern Pacific Ocean east of New Zealand.

In an Instagram post on 20 March 2024, Chris Brown wrote that he had become the first person to swim to Point Nemo.

Where is Point Nemo?

Point Nemo is an imaginary point in the south Pacific Ocean that is very far from land. It is located at coordinates 48°52.6′ South latitude and 123°23.6′ West longitude.

The nearest landmass in the north is Ducie Island, part of the Pitcairn Islands, which is 2,688 km away from Point Nemo. In the northeast of Point Nemo lies Motu Nui Island, part of Easter Island and in the south is Maher Island, part of Antarctica.

Who gave the name Point Nemo?

A Croatian-Canadian survey engineer, Hrvoje Lukatela, using a geospatial computer programme, calculated the point in the South Pacific Ocean in 1992.

He named the region Point Nemo in 1992 after the fictional captain Nemo created by author Jules Verne. In Jules Verne’s fiction book Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Captain Nemo was the captain of a submarine. Nemo is a Latin word which means ‘no man.’

Poles of inaccessibility on Earth

A pole of inaccessibility is a geographical location on a map which is very difficult for humans to reach as it is very remote from geographical features which provide an access to reach it. It could be either in the Ocean or on the continents. It is not a physical location but an imaginary point.

The concept was first introduced in 1920 by the Canadian explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson to distinguish between the North Pole and the most difficult-to-reach place in the Arctic.

Some of the Poles of Inaccessibility on Earth are:

Continental Pole of Inaccessibility, which is located in central Asia. It is the farthest point from the ocean and lies in northwest China.
Northern pole of inaccessibility (84°03′N 174°51′W), also known as the Arctic pole of inaccessibility, or Arctic pole, is located on the Arctic Ocean.
Southern pole of inaccessibility is the point on the Antarctic continent, which is most distant from the Southern Ocean.
In North America, the continental pole of inaccessibility is in southwest South Dakota about eleven miles southeast of the town of Kyle.
Oceanic pole of inaccessibility is the Point Nemo in the South Pacific Ocean.