New Detailed Illustration of Seafloor Might Help Trace Missing Malaysian Flight MH370

A new illustration of the seafloor detailing the underwater terrain where the Malaysian Airlines flight went missing might offer some new clues.

The detailed mapping by two seafloor experts offers an insight into the zone where the missing flight may be located. This  may bring some hope to relatives of passengers aboard the missing Malaysian Airlines flight who are still holding on to a thin ray of hope.

The novel illustration of the seafloor gives details of the underwater terrain. It not just offers clue on the location of the flight that went missing on March 8, 2014, but also helps in selecting the right underwater vehicles needed to trace the missing plane and its debris.

This new seafloor topography map shows the pointed plateaus, ridges and various other underwater features of a massive region beneath the Indian Ocean where an ongoing search continues.  The seafloor illustration measuring 1,243 miles by 870 miles area is the region where flight MH370 might be. This reveals the site on the seafloor corresponding to the airplane's black box acoustic signals that were detected by two vessels.  Also it reveals the two plateaus where the pings were heard.

The map points to the deepest point in the area that is 7,883 meters below the sea in the Wallaby-Zenith Fracture Zone. The undersea mountains and plateaus rise nearly 5,000 meters above the deep seafloor.

Designated as Figure 1, the illustration was created by Walter H.F. Smith and Karen M. Marks  from NOAA's laboratory for satellite Altimetry in College Park, Maryland.

In order to illustrate the topography of the search area, the duo used publicly available data from General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) and other bathymetric models and data banks combined with information retrieved from news sources.

Based on the terrains and depth revealed in the map, the researchers can select the right underwater robotic vehicle and hunt for the missing plane.

The experts caution that this new illustration is no roadmap to the missing flight nor does it reveal the official search area for the aircraft.

Smith said he hoped that "the data collected during the search for MH370 will be contributed to public data banks and will be a start of greater efforts to map Earth's ocean floor."

The image was published in Eos, the weekly newspaper of the Earth and Space sciences of the American Geophysical Union.