The Spilhaus Projection: a World Map According to Fish

Posted3 months agoActive2 months ago

zynovex

151 points

18 comments

southernwoodenboatsailing.comSciencestory

calmpositive

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CartographyMap ProjectionsOceanography

Key topics

Cartography

Map Projections

Oceanography

The Spilhaus Projection is a unique map that centers the world's oceans, providing a new perspective on global geography, and sparking discussion on alternative map projections and their applications.

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Oct 12, 2025 at 5:59 AM EDT
3 months ago
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Oct 21, 2025 at 11:01 AM EDT
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Discussion (18 comments)

Showing 18 comments

ggerules

3 months ago

3 replies

According to saltwater fish... What about all of the freshwater fish?

Cool map though!

normie3000

3 months ago

1 reply

Freshwater fish have multiple, much smaller maps which have no connection to each other.

Gravityloss

2 months ago

It is one of the most mind boggling thing to me how many animal species can survive with such convoluted life cycles. Fish do find their way into weird places. I've heard that fish egg stick to waterfowl feet.

dvh

3 months ago

1 reply

Are rivers 2d or 1d?

edoceo

3 months ago

1 reply

stronglikedan

3 months ago

4d when they flow

hopelite

3 months ago

1 reply

Not to mention that no fish would have any insight into at least whatever is within visible distance from the shore surface. An accurate version of such a map would highlight an interesting perspective of how humans also lack the ability to perceive, comprehend, or even accept things they either physically or psychologically cannot perceive or do not wish to perceive and accept it.

fph

3 months ago

1 reply

More importantly, I imagine a 2D map would not be useful for fish: there is much more space to represent when you can also swim up and down.

croisillon

3 months ago

1 reply

the fish need more data:

- depths https://www.horizont.net/news/media/8/Die-Schaup-des-jeweil-...

- and temperature https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/...

cratermoon

3 months ago

and salinity

HALtheWise

2 months ago

1 reply

A friend of mine created something similar using a numerical optimization based approach to minimize distortion. He also made the artistic choice to split the water between Australia and Asia to get even lower distortion. See Elastic II here:

https://kunimune.blog/2023/12/29/introducing-the-elastic-pro...

zokier

2 months ago

Elastic II is very neat by preserving drainage basins. But Antarctica looks really distorted, in a way that doesn't seem necessary? Could that be fixed somehow?

cratermoon

3 months ago

Is there or could there be an equivalent centered on the north geographic pole? I'm aware of Polar Stereographic Projections and similar but they don't unify the oceans the way the Spilhaus does.

yohbho

2 months ago

Nice reminder, that every eel in austria came from the caribic by looking at a path in this map.

srean

3 months ago

I may be very easy to amuse but but Spilhaus projection for compact Hausdorff space (the surface of the Earth) tickled my drying bones.

Seems the landmasses are indeed housing off all that spilled water.

Humor aside, the first thing it reminded me of is the Quincunx projection. There all the landmass is at the centre and is housed off by the oceans. And you can tile Euclidean space with it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peirce_quincuncial_projection

worik

3 months ago

That is an awesome map

dang

3 months ago

(Very) little bits of past discussion. Others?

The Spilhaus World Ocean Map in a Square (2020) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36498614 - June 2023 (2 comments)

A far-sighted Minnesota scientist pointed America toward the future - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35756976 - April 2023 (2 comments)

A world map that’s all about oceans - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33816910 - Dec 2022 (1 comment)

mmooss

3 months ago