New Seabed Search is Underway [S2Ep27 video]

An Ocean Infinity vessel is heading to the search zone

In late December, Malaysia announced that it reached an agreement with the marine survey company Ocean Infinity to resume searching the seabed for MH370, but it left many questions unanswered. When would the search would occur? Where would they look? Which vessels would be deployed? Some even questioned whether the search would really take place at all.

Finally, the answers are at hand. Ocean Infinity ship Armada 78 06 is currently en route from Mauritius to the search area on the southern Indian Ocean, 1,000 miles west of Perth, Australia. It is expected to arrive on February 23 and to search the ocean floor using a trio of state-of-the-art underwater autonomous vehicles (AUVs).

We know all this because a man named Kevin Rupp maintains a Facebook page called “Ocean Infinity News and Updates” where he posts marine tracking information from a company called BigOceanData. Basically he’s paid to access premium satellite-based marine tracking data and is sharing that with the public. Thank you, Kevin!

Armada 78 06 sailed out of port on the island of Mauritius on February 8 and sailed 20 miles north. For most of the week that followed, it followed a zig-zag path back and forth in a fairly confined area, apparently testing the AUVs to make sure everything was working properly before heading out into the remote Indian Ocean where repairs would be harder to do. Finally, on Friday morning Mauritius time the ship at least began its 2,000 nautical mile journey to the search area.

It’s worth noting that the ship’s current track doesn’t give us any visibility on where it will conduct the new search. It’s on a heading of 140 (i.e. to the southeast) which would take it pretty far south of any plausible search area. This very likely has to do with the fact that there are a number of strong storms currently raging in the Indian Ocean and the ship will certainly want to plot a route to avoid them.

Given that it’s been seven years since the last search, and a whole suite of new technology has come online since then, not least artificial intelligence, it will be really interesting to see how quickly they’re able to complete the 15,000 square kilometers they’ve agreed to search, and whether they’ll decide to go beyond it.

My two cents: I bet they will go beyond it. During their last search they searched a lot more than they initially signed on for, and there’s naturally going to be the dynamic that, if you’ve come all this way and not found it, you might was well look a little more.

The bottom line is that, after a lot of promises and false starts, the search now appears to be fully underway, and what may be the final chapter in the search for MH370 is about to be written.