I See Seychelles from the Seashore

A few years ago Eric Odenheimer had the idea of mapping what lay across the ocean from every beach in North, South and Central America. His popular static map showed which country you would see if you could see all the way across the ocean.

What Odenheimer's map visualizes is the country across the ocean which is on an equivalent latitude. Andy Woodruff was inspired by Odenheimer's map to create a series of maps which actually show you what is actually across the ocean if you look perpendicular to the coast. In Beyond the Sea Andy takes into account that the coastline bends and turns and faces in lots of different directions and also that the world happens to be a sphere.

Esri UK was in turn inspired by Andy Woodruff's maps to create an interactive map of Coastal Views from the United Kingdom. Esri's map draws lines from different points along the UK coast showing which country lies across the ocean if you look perpendicular to the coastline.

Andy Woodruff has also been working on an interactive version of his static maps. In Beyond the Sea, Flowing & Exploding Edition Andy animates the great circle paths from around 16,000 different coatal locations around the world. These lines represent the view you would have from these locations if you could look all the way across the ocean perpendicular from the coastline.