Supposedly there is a floating “reef” of disposed condoms in the middle of the South Pacific, about halfway between Tahiti and Antarctica. The mass is “almost two miles long, an eighth of a mile wide, and in places up to 60 feet deep”.
Pictures! I want pictures!
Anyone heard of this or other wierd man-made oceanic wonders out there?
I’m voting for a hoax here. For one thing, the name “Mason Froule” only crops up on the net in this one story - a good sign of an urban legend.
Trying to find the website of the “Oceanographic Laboratory Outpost” on Macquarie Island is equally fruitless.
Hmm… MASON FROULE = FOOL SURNAME. Possibly.
No hits in the archives of any UK newspapers from the period.
In any case, the story dates back to at least 1996, so such a thing, if it ever existed, has probably broken up. Think about it - what mechanism would cause just condoms to clump together in one area. Sure, you sometimes come across rafts of floating debris that accumulate thanks to currents, but I don’t see how the current could be, er, rubber-specific…
Definitely just fun.
Note they “forgot” such little things as north/south and east/west? And in any case it is unlikely that anything could actually be in any of the four possible spots. A look at an atlas shows 63 degrees to be either in Antarctica or up around the northern polar circle.
Not terribly well done, as such jokes go. Really cool would have been giving the coordinates of the authors favorite bar or of a cathouse.
OK. I didn’t see the “South Pacific” part. That narrows it down.
That ends up being about 300 and something miles north of the Antarctic coast. Encarta doesn’t show any islands around close.
Whatever.
I don’t really see that you can object based on the location: 63ºS 154ºW does indeed locate a spot between Macquarie Island and the coast of Antarctica, right on the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge.
I still call BS though… you’d think this would have gained more publicity if it were true - it’s only made a handful of web pages and a couple of Usenet postings. Maybe it’s one of those failed urban legends 
A moment’s thought on this would seem to be enough to dismiss it as nonsense. Why no floating island of banana peels? Why no floating island of Twinkie wrappers? Sheesh.
Based on an average of 30ft deep, thats over 209 MILLION cubic feet of condoms. I’d have a hard time believing that something like that would be on worldwide news. In fact it would probably be common knowledge by this point.
Unless condoms have some sort of magnetic attraction to each other or an inherent homing instinct, the likelihood of this occurrence is less than zero. It’s rubbish, through and through.
Hmmm, that should be "I’d have a hard time believing that something like that wouldn’t on worldwide news.