PERTH — A cluster of orange objects spotted by a search plane was just fishing equipment and not related to the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, officials said Monday, in the latest disappointment in the three-week hunt that Australia’s prime minister said will continue indefinitely.
The crew of an Australian P-3 Orion saw at least four orange objects that were more than 2 meters (6 feet) in size on Sunday, and the pilot, Flight Lt. Russell Adams, dubbed the sighting their most promising lead in the search for Flight 370. But on Monday, Australian Maritime Safety Authority spokesman Jesse Platts said an analysis confirmed the objects “have nothing to do with the missing flight.”
It’s a frustrating pattern in the hunt for the Boeing 777, which vanished while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 with 239 people aboard: Search crews have repeatedly spotted multiple objects floating in the search area of the southern Indian Ocean, only for officials to later rule out links to the missing plane.
Sometimes the object spotted in the water is a snarled fishing line. Or a buoy. Or something that might once have been the lid to an ice box. Not once – not yet at least – has it been a clue.
Rob Griffith /Getty Images)A piece of unknown debris floats just under the water in this image taken onboard a Royal New Zealand P3 Orion while it was searching for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 on March 31, 2014 in Perth, Australia. Several objects have been sighted in the Indian Ocean over the past few days, but none confirmed to be related to the missing airliner.
Anticipation has repeatedly turned into frustration in the search for signs of Flight 370 as objects spotted from planes from the seas off Vietnam, to waters west of Malaysia and Indonesia, and then to several areas west of Australia have turned out to be garbage. Not only is the trash a time-wasting distraction for air and sea crews searching for debris from the Malaysia Airlines flight that vanished March 8, it also points to wider problems in the world’s oceans.
“Any search and rescue attempt will be hampered by untold quantities of debris,” said Los Angeles captain Charles Moore, an environmental advocate credited with bringing attention to an ocean gyre between Hawaii and California known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which by some accounts is about the size of Texas.
Even with relatively high-resolution satellite imaging, he said, “you are going to be confounded by the detritus of civilization.”
The world’s oceans have four more of these flotsam-collecting vortexes, Moore said, and the searchers, in an area about 1,850 kilometers (1,150 miles) west of Perth, have stumbled onto the eastern edge of a gyre in the Indian Ocean.
“It’s like a toilet bowl that swirls but doesn’t flush,” said Moore.
AP Photo/Jason ReedIn this Saturday, March 29, 2014 file photo, an object floats in the southern Indian Ocean in this picture taken from a Royal New Zealand Air Force P-3K2 Orion aircraft searching for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
The garbage patches are nothing like a typical city dump. In fact, most of the trash can’t even be seen: It’s composed of tiny bits of plastic bobbing just below the surface. The larger items in these gyres also tend to be plastic and are often fishing-related, Moore said. Though, he added, he has come across light bulbs, a toilet seat, and, bobbing off the California coast, a refrigerator, complete with defrosted orange juice.
Nicholas Mallos, a marine debris specialist with the Ocean Conservancy, an advocacy group in Washington, said that among the larger items found in the world’s oceans are mattresses, docks, crates, containers and tangled masses of abandoned fishing nets, buoys and other gear. Even “ghost” fishing ships, 30 to 50 feet long, have washed up on coasts, he said.
“Truly anything you can think of has likely been found,” Mr. Mallos added.
While there are no firm data about marine debris, studies of shoreline cleanup projects and other activities suggest that four-fifths of what is floating in the ocean originates from land sources: litter and waste that is left on beaches or travels down rivers or through storm drains to the sea.
Experts agree that most debris is small and plastic — often bottles, bags and other common household or commercial items. Also floating around are “nurdles,” the tiny plastic pellets that are shipped, by the tens of millions of tons, to factories that make plastic goods. Over time, most small plastic objects break down into even smaller particles because of the effects of waves and sunlight.
AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE / ABIS JULIANNE CROPLEY This handout photo taken on March 28, 2014 and released on March 31 shows Able Seaman Marine Technician Matthew Oxley keeping watch onboard the HMAS Success while the ship is deployed in search of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in the Indian Ocean.
There is plenty of larger debris, too. Aside from commercial fishing operations, where lost gear is commonplace, cargo containers account for some of it. But estimates of the number of containers that are torn from their lashings in heavy seas vary widely. Some advocacy groups claim that 10,000 or more are lost overboard each year, but the World Shipping Council, after surveying its members, estimated that 700 was more accurate.
Seattle oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer has been studying the phenomena of ocean debris for years. He said there are smaller collections of garbage that collect within the gyres.
“If you go into a house you’ll find dust bunnies,” he said. “The ocean has a mass of dust bunnies, each moving about 10 miles a day.”
Ebbesmeyer said he’s fascinated by what happens to the trash that spews from the hundreds of shipping containers lost overboard from cargo ships each year. He said there’s one that keeps belching out Lego pieces onto the beaches of Cornwall, England. Another spilled 2,000 computer monitors. Another released thousands of pairs of Nike sneakers.
Sometimes, he said, the containers themselves can become hazards as they float around for months, buoyed by plastic objects inside or the air trapped behind watertight doors.
Scientists are particularly worried about small and seemingly ubiquitous pieces of plastic that can be from shopping bags, plastic water bottles, or other household items. Waves break the items up into smaller pieces.
Denise Hardesty, a research scientist for Australian science agency CSIRO, said the studies she’s been involved with conservatively estimate there are between 5,000 and 7,000 small pieces of plastic per square kilometer in the waters around Australia.
She said two-thirds of the seabirds she’s performed necropsies upon have ingested at least some plastic and one particular bird had swallowed 175 pieces. Another bird, she said, had swallowed an entire glow stick longer than a finger. Such sticks are used by fishermen to attract fish underwater.
“It takes 400 or 500 years for lots of types of plastics to completely break down,” Hardesty said. “It just goes into smaller and smaller bits. You even find plastics in plankton – that’s how small it gets.”
AFP PHOTO / CHINA CENTER FOR RESOURCES SATELLITE DATA AND APPLICATION (CCRSDA) This handout photo provided on March 13, 2014 by the China Center for Resources Satellite Data and Application (CCRSDA) and released by the website of the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for the National Defence of China, shows a satellite image taken from space, illustrating objects in a "suspected crash sea area" in the South China Sea on March 9, 2014
Hardesty said while she finds plenty of plastic in the ocean, she doesn’t typically spot many larger objects. She said she does find trash like cans, bottles and candy wrappers floating near urban centers, but most of it tends to get washed ashore.
American sailor James Burwick said he’s twice crossed the Indian Ocean from Africa to Australia. He said the sea was too wild to see much trash but he did feel bumps against the bottom of his boat, and an old fishing net once got caught around his vessel.
Wing Cmdr. Andy Scott, of New Zealand’s defense force, said the crew in a P-3 Orion scouring the ocean for Flight 370 on Saturday spotted about 70 objects over four hours.
Three were deemed worthy of further investigation, he said, but none turned out to be from the missing plane. One was probably a fishing line, he said, another was the suspected ice box lid, and a third was some unidentified brown and orange material.
Department of DefenceThis combo of handout images taken by satellite image provider DigitalGlobe on March 16, 2014 and released on March 20, 2014 by the Australian Government's Department of Defence via the Australian Maritime Safety Authority show satelite images of objects in the Indian Ocean which may be from missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 which disappeared en route to Beijing early on March 8.
“From my experience, it can be quite a roller coaster,” he said. “You sight these search objects, and think you’ve made a breakthrough, and then you have to get back to your routine.”
Scott said that over time, small pieces of debris can raft and tangle together in the ocean to make something larger. Such rafts will eventually attract sea life, he said, which can stir up the water and make it appear to be more important than it is.
“A lot of the stuff we are seeing,” he said, “is basically rubbish.”
With files from the New York Times