A TikToker spotted a saucer-shaped object that crashed on the beach of Starbuck Island in the central Pacific ocean while using Google Earth.
User @GoogleMapsFun was browsing through Google Earth near French Polynesia and North of Kiribati in the Pacific when they zoomed in on an uninhabited coral called the Starbuck Island. While exploring the island they noticed a something bizarre.
On the beach of the abandoned island there was a long streak across the land with a saucer shaped like object at the end of it. The user proceeded to post the findings on TikTok wondering what the object really was and gave rise to UFO sighting theories. "Could this be a UFO," the user wrote.
Many users on the video sharing platform offered their analysis on the sighting. One user managed to debunk the UFO theory by stating the history of the Starbuck islands, YourTango.com reported.
"It's a leftover building from the Guano collection in the 19th century. It's named Starbuck after the captain who discovered it," the user wrote.
Now a wildlife sanctuary and a popular breeding ground for various species, the Starbuck Island was discovered by Valentine Starbuck, captain of a whaling ship in 1823. The island was claimed by the US under the Guano Act of 1856 until Britain annexed it in 1866.
Research by National Geographic reveals that the object might not be a UFO but instead a poorly formed building structure. The photography magazine published two videos in 2009 documenting an on-shore excursion on the Starbuck island. The excursion was led by Dr Enric Sala and the Ocean Now team, which revealed that the island is full of hand made building structures.
According to ExBulletin news, users also highlighted another theory of the object being an abandoned ship as there have been quite a few reports of ships crashing in the waters surrounding the island in the past.
One of the incidents include the report of Sacramento Daily Union 1897 which described a ship crashing the Starbuck island at a rate of 7 knots after being 'overwhelmed' by water. The survivors were transported to a nearby island of Sofia, where the indigenous people took care of them for 10 months until a steamship sailed to pick them up again.
