International
U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Peter D. Blair/Handout via Reuters
Australian officials said Thursday that after examining detailed photographs of unidentified material that washed ashore in the southwestern part of the country they are satisfied it is not a clue in the search for the missing Malaysian plane.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has advised search coordinators that the material, which washed ashore 6 miles east of Augusta in Western Australia, is not from missing Flight 370, according to a statement from the Joint Agency Coordination Center.
Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the safety bureau, told The Associated Press Wednesday that an initial analysis of the material — which appeared to be sheet metal with rivets — suggested it was not from the plane.
"We do not consider this likely to be of use to our search for MH370," he said.
Augusta is near Australia's southwestern tip, about 190 miles from Perth, where the search has been headquartered.
The search coordination center also said Thursday a robotic submarine, the U.S. Navy's Bluefin 21, had scanned more than 90 percent of the 120-square mile seabed search zone off the Australian west coast, creating a three-dimensional sonar map of the ocean floor, but had found nothing of interest.
The 2.8-mile deep search area is a circle 12 miles wide around an area where sonar equipment picked up a signal on April 8 consistent with a plane's black boxes. But the batteries powering those signals are now believed dead.
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Defense Minister David Johnston said Australia was consulting with Malaysia, China and the United States on the next phase of the search for the plane, which disappeared March 8. Details on the next phase are likely to be announced next week.
Johnston said more powerful towed side-scan commercial sonar equipment would probably be deployed, similar to the remote-controlled subs that found RMS Titanic 12,500 feet under the Atlantic Ocean in 1985.
"The next phase, I think, is that we step up with potentially a more powerful, more capable side-scan sonar to do deeper water," Johnston told The Associated Press.
While the Bluefin had less than one-fifth of the seabed search area to complete, Johnston estimated that task would take another two weeks.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the airliner's probable impact zone was 430 miles long and 50 miles wide. A new search strategy would be adopted if nothing was found in the current seabed search zone.
Abbott said searchers owed it to both the 239 people on the flight and the world's "billions" of plane travelers to "get to the bottom of this."
The focus of the next search phase will be decided by continuing analysis of information including flight data and sound detections of the suspected beacons, Johnston said.
"A lot of this seabed has not even been hydrographically surveyed before — some of it has — but we're flying blind," he said, adding that the seabed in the vicinity of the search was up to 4 miles deep.
The search center said an air search involving 10 planes was suspended for a second day because of heavy seas and poor visibility.
But 12 ships would join Wednesday's search of an expanse covering 14,500 square miles, centered 1,000 miles northwest of Perth.
Radar and satellite data show the jet veered far off course on March 8 for unknown reasons during its flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing.
Analysis indicates it would have run out of fuel in the remote section of ocean where the search has been focused. Not one piece of debris from the plane has been found since the massive multinational hunt began.
Al Jazeera and The Associated Press
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