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Suspected debris may lie above undersea volcanoes
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THE cluster of suspected debris from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has been sighted above a giant undersea chain of volcanoes whose complex terrain has barely been charted, an Australian marine geologist says.
Robin Beaman, from James Cook University, said so little of the southern Indian Ocean sea floor, including the search zone, had been mapped in detail that any attempt to retrieve wreckage would require extensive 3D mapping, possibly by ships with multibeam echo sounders, The Sydney Morning Herald reported yesterday.
But Australia no longer has the capacity to chart depths of 3000 meters, the average depth of the search area, because the only government vessel capable of conducting mapping of that kind, the RV Southern Surveyor, had been decommissioned in December, the report said.
The research vessel's replacement was being built in Singapore and was about to undergo sea trials, Dr Beaman reportedly said.
''It's bad timing really. Australia has no capability of mapping these depths,'' he said. Multibeam echo sounders send out sound pulses in the shape of a fan, returning depths of the sea floor directly under the ship and on either side, a pattern known as a swath, the report said.
A Defense spokeswoman of the country said while the search area was within the Australian Hydrographic Service's area of charting responsibility, it had not been mapped to great detail because of the very deep nature of the region, which made it less risky for ships.
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