The ruggedness of the undersea volcano that a critical piece of MH370 search equipment struck on Sunday is shown up in newly released bathymetric imagery. It begs the question, could the missing jet be concealed from discovery by the complexity of this part of the south Indian Ocean floor? The incident broke a 4500 metre […]

The ruggedness of the undersea volcano that a critical piece of MH370 search equipment struck on Sunday is shown up in newly released bathymetric imagery. It begs the question, could the missing jet be concealed from discovery by the complexity of this part of the south Indian Ocean floor?

The incident broke a 4500 metre cable and a deep sea sonar scanning towfish free from Fugro Discovery leaving it in what may be a recoverable location on the side of the Intrepid volcano.

Intrepid rises as much 2200 metres from the sea bed in this part of the priority search zone for the Malaysia Airlines 777 with 239 people on board that went missing on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 8 March 2014.

The location of the towfish is shown on a flank of the volcano in the image at the top of the page.

In its weekly update on the Australian managed search for the sunk durable wreckage of the jet the JACC also details an unfortunate brush with a large commercial fishing net which forced repairs to equipment being used by the Havila Harmony which operates a large autonomous underwater vehicle to check out especially deep or difficult areas of the sea floor.

The bathymetric images released by the JACC and the hands on search managers, the ATSB, can be expanded into high definition detail on a large computer screen.

In the image shown at the bottom of the page the yellow line traces the intended path being taken by the towfish from upper right to lower left of frame when the accident occurred. The break point is on the upper right hand slope of the volcano.

Some 35,000 square kilometres of the priority search zone of 120,000 square kilometres in total remain to be searched. This is expected to take until sometime in June. If nothing is found the search area will not be extended, and unless some more intensive examinations are to be made of the search zone, the search for MH370 will end, leaving it the major unsolved airline disaster mystery of all time.

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