MH370 Search Uncovers Second Shipwreck

The search for missing aircraft MH370 has uncovered a second shipwreck.

On 19 December 2015, an sonar anomaly was identified in the course of the underwater search, with initial analysis suggesting the object was likely to be man-made. Search vessel Havila Harmony was tasked with further examination of the location using an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). On January 2, 2016, the AUV captured high-resolution sonar imagery showing an iron or steel-hulled shipwreck 3,700 meters (2.3 miles) below the surface.

The Shipwreck Galleries of the Western Australian Museum have conducted a preliminary review of some sonar imagery and advised that the vessel is likely to be a steel/iron vessel dating from the turn of the 19th Century.

Details of the location of the wreck are yet to be revealed.

Another shipwreck of similar age was found in May 2015 about four kilometers (2.5 miles) below the surface and more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) off Western Australia. 

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board.

More than 80,000 square kilometers of the seafloor have been searched so far.

In the event the aircraft is found and accessible, Australia, Malaysia and the People’s Republic of China have agreed to plans for recovery activities, including securing all the evidence necessary for the accident investigation.

The search for the plane is scheduled to end in June this year “in the absence of credible new information that leads to the specific location of the aircraft”, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre has stated.

Some families of the passengers are skeptical about the plane’s location and believe their relatives are still alive and being kept hostage. Some have therefore dismissed the discovery of a flapperon believed to be from MH370 that washed up on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion last July.

A December 2015 report justifying the defined search area is available here.