#MH370 DAY 30- Chief Coordinator of the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston (Retd) Quick summary, updates as of 11.30am : - Houston confirmed 3 acoustic signals detected- First acoustic detection was 36 hours ago (Friday)-it was a quick detection. The Haixun 01 stayed in the area investigating & yesterday afternoon there was another detection- less than 2km from the first one & it was about 90 seconds long. Three hours ago the Ocean Shield also detected another acoustic signal but needs to be investigated. Now, the fact we have two detection slightly apart ( 2km ) in the in terms of distance in the ocean of that size, we have something promising & we will investigate thoroughly. However I urge the media to treat this information carefully as it remains unverified -Houston also said the area where Haixun 01 detected the signals is in the area of their high probability during search - Pretty close, thats why we are interested - Search operations : Currently HMS Echo and Ocean Shield is heading to the scene where the signals were detected and weather is expected to be good in the search area (cloud base of 2,500 feet/ visibility greater than 10km) HMS Echo is closer- 14 hours from the new position. She will get there quick but the Ocean Shield is in the process of exploiting another acoustic event. Houston said once the Ocean Shield is completed- if decided to move her down it will be 2 hours to recover & approximately 24 hours to stay down there followed by another 2,3 hours redeployment. The environment is very demanding and it will take a long period of time.The water is very deep, about 4.5km straight down. Its important we establish something down there first. We are long way in making that conclusion. Sometimes you can get false indication. There is a lot of noises in the ocean and sometimes acoustic equipment can rebound echo and some issue around that
Posted on: Sun, 06 Apr 2014 05:18:06 +0000