MH370 search could take centuries, says world renowned oceanographer Erik van Sebille

THE underwater search for MH370 is on track to be completed by late May, but at least one expert is willing to bet the missing aircraft won’t be found by then. 
 
Internationally respected oceanographer Erik van Sebille said it is more likely to be decades or even centuries before the Boeing 777 is discovered on the bottom of the southern Indian Ocean.

“In the context of the ocean this is a tiny, tiny speck,” said Dr van Sebille.

“Like many other missing planes, missing ships, it might take a very long time, decades, centuries before we stumble on it.

“A lot of the very ancient wrecks have only been found quite recently because people stumbled upon them.”

Search continues ... The Dragon Prince deep tow fish is recovered onto the back deck, as Fugro Discovery completes the first stage of the search for the missing Malaysia airlines flight MH370. Picture: Supplied Source: Supplied

 

He likened the search effort as “trying to find your keys in the City of Sydney during a blackout”.

“So you’ve got complete darkness and you have something the size of Sydney and you have to find your keys there,” Dr van Sebille said.

“It’s only if you’re very lucky and stumble upon them, will you find them.”

The underwater search passed the halfway mark this week with 30,000 square kilometres of sea floor searched in the priority search area.

Despite highly sensitive equipment capable of sniffing out jet fuel, no trace of the missing aircraft has been found more than a year after its disappearance on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Centuries ... Oceanographer Erik van Sebille said it is more likely to be decades or even centuries before the flight MH370 is discovered. Picture: Supplied Source: Supplied

 

It remains unknown if a Malaysia Airlines towelette found on a West Australian beach last July came from MH370, but Dr van Sebille said it was not unreasonable to think that it did.

“There is so much trash in the ocean, so much floating around that we don’t know what is from the plane, what is not from MH370, and unless we find something that’s very clearly from MH370 like a piece of the fuselage or so it will be quite difficult,” he said.

There was a silver lining from the search however, with valuable scientific work being carried out by the many experts working on the mystery.

“There’s never been such a large area of ocean floor mapped in this detail and we can only hope that it will actually lead to some magnificent scientific breakthrough so this horrible tragedy has a bit of a silver lining to it,” said Dr van Sebille.

“We we know so little of the ocean floor. We know more of the surface of Mars than the bottom of the ocean.”

news.com.au 13 Mar 2015

So let's get this straight:

• An airplane that has GPS tracking in its engines, cannot be found.

• An airplane that hits the water generally leaves debris behind as it breaks up on impact, depending on angle, cannot be found.

• Many country's military use 'real time' satellite information to track airplanes could not find this particular one.

The above points are just a few of many that answers as to what really happened, which is kept from the masses.