Update 09/02/18:
Via that man in the Oz..
‘Dark’ ship hunting for MH370 goes on show in WA port
![[Image: 6386d12be379455c2033d1644fa5cb30?width=650]](https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/6386d12be379455c2033d1644fa5cb30?width=650)
12:00am EAN HIGGINS.
The ship hunting for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 revealed its bizarre shape to the people of Western Australia yesterday, but its crew is understood to have been ordered to keep mum.
After a fortnight scouring what Australian experts believe were the most likely resting places of the Boeing 777 in the southern Indian Ocean, the Seabed Constructor docked at Henderson, south of Perth, to resupply. The ship is leased by Ocean Infinity, a Houston-based marine survey company that last month struck a deal with the Malaysian government to search for MH370 on a “no find, no fee” basis that could net it up to $US70 million ($89m).
MH370 disappeared with 239 people on board on March 8, 2014, on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
A weekly report from the Malaysian government said the Seabed Constructor, which is using eight torpedo-like unmanned mini-submarines with sonar imaging equipment, has now covered 7500sq km of an initial 25,000sq km search zone. Maps provided by Malaysian authorities indicate the vessel has searched all three of the positions determined by the CSIRO and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau as being most likely to find MH370, based largely on drift modelling of parts of the aircraft found washed up on the other side of the Indian Ocean.
Some days ago, the Seabed Constructor “went dark”, disappearing from real-time tracking, leading to wild speculation that it was hunting for treasure on a shipwreck found on the previous search by the ATSB, and was trying to keep its location secret. Ocean Infinity spokesman Mark Antelme told The Australian: “As highlighted in the weekly report, there were a couple of points of interest identified last week. These turned out to be of no significance.
“Ocean Infinity did not want to give the impression they had found the wreckage.”
The ship turned off its transponder so the Twitterati watching its movements on ship-tracking sites would not conclude it had found MH370 as it hovered in one place.
Images of the two “points of interest” are displayed in the weekly report; geological seabed features that in one case look like underwater sand dunes, and the other some indentations. CSIRO oceanographer David Griffin, who led the drift modelling study, said one thing that intrigued him was the positions of the two features were right next to two of the three favoured sites he had identified.
MTF...P2
Via that man in the Oz..
‘Dark’ ship hunting for MH370 goes on show in WA port
12:00am EAN HIGGINS.
The ship hunting for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 revealed its bizarre shape to the people of Western Australia yesterday, but its crew is understood to have been ordered to keep mum.
After a fortnight scouring what Australian experts believe were the most likely resting places of the Boeing 777 in the southern Indian Ocean, the Seabed Constructor docked at Henderson, south of Perth, to resupply. The ship is leased by Ocean Infinity, a Houston-based marine survey company that last month struck a deal with the Malaysian government to search for MH370 on a “no find, no fee” basis that could net it up to $US70 million ($89m).
MH370 disappeared with 239 people on board on March 8, 2014, on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
A weekly report from the Malaysian government said the Seabed Constructor, which is using eight torpedo-like unmanned mini-submarines with sonar imaging equipment, has now covered 7500sq km of an initial 25,000sq km search zone. Maps provided by Malaysian authorities indicate the vessel has searched all three of the positions determined by the CSIRO and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau as being most likely to find MH370, based largely on drift modelling of parts of the aircraft found washed up on the other side of the Indian Ocean.
Some days ago, the Seabed Constructor “went dark”, disappearing from real-time tracking, leading to wild speculation that it was hunting for treasure on a shipwreck found on the previous search by the ATSB, and was trying to keep its location secret. Ocean Infinity spokesman Mark Antelme told The Australian: “As highlighted in the weekly report, there were a couple of points of interest identified last week. These turned out to be of no significance.
“Ocean Infinity did not want to give the impression they had found the wreckage.”
The ship turned off its transponder so the Twitterati watching its movements on ship-tracking sites would not conclude it had found MH370 as it hovered in one place.
Images of the two “points of interest” are displayed in the weekly report; geological seabed features that in one case look like underwater sand dunes, and the other some indentations. CSIRO oceanographer David Griffin, who led the drift modelling study, said one thing that intrigued him was the positions of the two features were right next to two of the three favoured sites he had identified.
MTF...P2