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| Image Credit: CC BY-SA 4.0 Brocken Inaglory |
The ship searching for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared from tracking screens for three days after it turned off its own satellite monitoring system with no explanation.
At the beginning of January, the US-based company Ocean Infinity was hired by the Malaysian government to search for the missing plane, which disappeared in March 2014.
Its ship, Seabed Constructor, began the search on 22 January, but on Thursday, after only 10 days, it turned off its Automatic Identification System (AIS) with no explanation.
Three days later, it reappeared outside the search area and on its way to a scheduled refuelling stop at the Australian port of Fremantle. Neither the Malaysian government nor Ocean Infinity has explained the outage, or where the ship travelled in those three days.
Family members of those on board the missing flight have called on the Malaysian government and Ocean Infinity to explain the blackout, amid mounting speculation over the ship’s movements.
KS Narendran, who had a relative on MH370, called for greater transparency over the ship’s temporary disappearance.
“I found the development quite odd, and worrying,” he said. “If this silence and becoming invisible was intentional, to ward off suspicion, a satisfactory explanation is due. If it was for other reasons, then in the interests of transparency, we ought to be told what caused it.
“There are no journalists and no family members on board the search ship. I wish there were some ... We watch on in good faith. I hope ongoing official disclosure is of such a high order that there is little room for speculation, controversy or a whiff of conspiracy.”
During the three-day data blackout conspiracy theories spread online, including one that Seabed Constructor had taken a detour to recover sunken treasure from the nearby wreck of the SV Inca, a Peruvian ship that sunk in 1911 while en route to Sydney.
Kevin Rupp, a precision machinist who has been publicly tracking Seabed Constructor, said that was highly unlikely.
“I have nothing polite to say about those who are spreading rumours that Seabed Constructor was really on a treasure hunt,” he said.
He said all speculation was simply guesswork, and the tracker may have been turned off to prevent unnecessary distress to the victim’s families. “If the ship detected possible contacts [with MH370] its most likely action would be to move to the spot of the detections and lower an ROV – a tethered remote-controlled small vehicle,” he said.
“To do this, Seabed Constructor would have to sit still in one place for a long period of time and this would be very noticeable to those of us watching through our AIS tracking apps ... I believe they may have turned the AIS transmitter to low power mode to prevent us from speculating that they had found something and causing undue distress for the next of kin.”
In the single update released by Malaysian officials so far, it was confirmed MH370 had not been found in the first week of the search, between 22 and 30 January.
During that time, Seabed Constructor had searched a “high priority” area that Australian researchers had pinpointed as the plane’s likely resting place. Between 2014 and 2017, Australian authorities had conducted a three-year search across 120,000sq km that failed to find the plane. Afterwards, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) identified the priority area as the next place to look.
Scientist Richard Cole said on Twitter he believed the ship had spent the three days in an area it had previously searched, in the south-east corner of the search area.
After refuelling in Fremantle, Seabed Constructor was expected to return to the search area. It has 90 days to find MH370 on a no-find, no-fee basis. A reward of between US$20m and $70m is available depending on the area searched.
Flight MH370 disappeared in March 2014, vanishing from radio contact 40 minutes into a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Military radar and satellite data suggested the plane suddenly turned around and flew south towards the Indian Ocean, crashing and claiming the lives of all 239 crew and passengers on board.
It was carrying 152 Chinese nationals and 50 from Malaysia, as well as passengers from Australia, Canada, France, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Taiwan, Ukraine and the US.
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