::::::I haven't verified the image above, but assuming it to be in good faith, it still doesn't show what Google Earth suggests exists there: a large, continuous, sand-covered island occupying the entirety of the shallow-water zone. At best one might expect to find a few segments of reef protruding over the surface. On consulting the first-generation news reports about the Southern Surveyor's observations, it doesn't actually say that they sounded to a depth of 1400 m, but merely that their charts showed that depth there  so if there's a big mistake, it's by the compilers of the nautical chart, not by the Southern Surveyor crew. (Apparently this got confused in later reports.) So I see no difficulty in believing that the Southern Surveyor sailed to the correct spot, found nothing above water, and moved on. And even if there is shallow water in the spot, it's still not part of a "continental shelf", as the earlier draft of this article claimed. It also remains unexplained when and why Google smudged over the area with black pixels.