The Japanese island suddenly disappears, looking forever and unseen

The Japanese Coast Guard opened a campaign to find something that would normally not be hard to find, an island.

According to Quartz, the small uninhabited island named Esanbe Hanakita Kojima , once existed in the waters off Hokkaido. Local residents in Sarufutsu, Hokkaido, informed of the island's disappearance last month.

The search of the local people ended without results.Satellite photos taken in 2018 are no longer pictures of the island, but just a small rocky beach.

Japan has hundreds of small uninhabited islands.

Esanbe Hanakita Kojima is one of 158 uninhabited islands, named by the Japanese government 4 years ago to claim sovereignty.

The Japanese Coast Guard said the last time they surveyed the island was more than 30 years ago. At that time, the island was at a position 1.4 meters above sea level.

It is worrisome that the island disappeared in the Japanese territorial belt. That means the territorial sea will also shrink.

Japanese coast guard forces said they would open a new search and investigate what happened, NHK TV reported. According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, an island is defined as 'naturally formed land, surrounded by water, and still floating on the water at high tide'.

Hokkaido residents say they still remember the existence of the island.'Since 1975, there is a small island there and I have set foot there' , Japanese fishermen said in the Asahi Shimbun.

Sarufutsu is the northernmost village of Japan, facing Sakhalin Island and bordering the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. The island in the north means that it is influenced by ice and storms during the winter.

The Japanese coast guard speculated that ice and waves had eroded the island over time.

The disappearance of the island has occurred in the past, especially in the South Pacific. Solomon Islands lost 5 islands because of erosion and rising sea levels.