Last year, in March 2024, at a gathering in Malaysia on the 10th anniversary of the disappearance of MH370, family member V.P.R. Nathan presented several slides highlighting Ocean Infinity’s willingness to conduct another subsea search for the debris field of the aircraft. The search area proposed at that time extended along the 7th arc from about 33°S to 36°S, and out to about 45 NM (83 km) on either side of the arc. Ocean Infinity also announced plans to “fill-in” areas that were previously searched that had low quality or missing data due to equipment failures or challenging terrain. The proposed search area surrounded the “Last Estimated Position” (LEP) from UGIB 2020, which was designated the “IG Hotspot” in the slide. The proposed search area also incorporated our High Priority Search Area due south of the LEP that was missed by the previous searches by the ATSB and Ocean Infinity due to the steep sloping terrain in that area.
More recently, there were the following developments:
- On December 20, 2024, the Malaysian government agreed “in principle” to a new search effort with Ocean Infinity, indicating the start of formal negotiations.
- On March 19, 2025, Malaysia’s Transport Minister Anthony Loke announced that the Malaysian cabinet had agreed to the terms and conditions of the agreement with Ocean Infinity under a “no find, no fee” arrangement, with a payment of $70 million if successful.
- On March 26, 2025, a group representing the families of MH370 victims announced that a no-find, no-fee contract was signed by Malaysia and Ocean Infinity. Despite this announcement, there has been no official confirmation from either Malaysia or Ocean Infinity.
In February 2025, with no signed contract in hand, Ocean Infinity began the search that was proposed the year before. After completing two phases of the subsea search, Armada 7806 and its team of three AUVs is now on course to Singapore. Prior to departing for Singapore, the activities conducted during the two phases can be summarized as follows:
Phase 1: After arriving in the search area after departing Mauritius, this phase of the search began on February 23 and was completed on February 28, before departing to Fremantle to reprovision and resupply. The areas searched during this phase (dotted black box in the figure above) were primarily areas previously searched by the ATSB and by Ocean Infinity. Consistent with Ocean Infinity’s proposal from March 2024, the Phase I activities focused on infilling data where challenging terrain such as steep slopes previously resulted in missing or low quality data (data holidays). As such, most of the area in the Phase 1 box was not re-searched. The areas searched in this phase included our “High Priority Search Area”.
Phase 2: After departing Fremantle, Armada 7806 began searching again on March 11 and continued until March 28, before departing for Singapore. The areas searched during this phase (dashed black box in the figure above) were never searched before, starting further southwest and wider than the area proposed by Ocean Infinity in March 2024 (red boxes in the figure above). This would suggest that Ocean Infinity intends to enlarge the search area from what was previously disclosed.
The reasons for Ocean Infinity concluding this part of the search appear to be related to worsening seasonal weather and also related to prior contractual commitments for Armada 7806.
An interesting event occurred during the return to the search area before the start of Phase 2. The course of Armada 7806 was originally towards a part of the area that was searched in Phase 1. Then, on March 10, there was a change in course towards the southwest to begin searching areas not previously covered.
If there was no change in course on March 10, the purple dotted line in the figure above shows where in the Phase 1 search area Armada 7806 would have reached. In fact, our prior article discussed the possibility that Armada 7806 was returning to a debris field that was detected during Phase 1. This area is shown in more detail in the figure below.
Shown in the figure by the black oval is an area that was possibly searched in both Phase 1 and Phase 2, which might mean a promising area required further investigation. However, as we don’t know the exact path that the AUVs followed after launching, there may have been little to no overlap between the Phase 1 and Phase 2 search areas.
So why did Armada 7806’s course change on March 10? Here are two possibilities:
- What resembled a debris field was found during Phase 1 and the plan was to revisit that area during Phase II to collect more data. Due to ongoing contract negotiations, OI strategically opted to not disclose the location of the debris field, and the course changed to the southwest. Some additional data in the area of the debris field might have been collected at the end of the Phase 2. (See the potential overlap area in the figure above.) If the debris field was already found, it is unknown whether Ocean Infinity has met the requirements to earn the fee of $70 million, which may require the retrieval of one or more parts of MH370.
- No semblance of a debris field was found during Phase 1. Originally the plan was to begin the Phase 2 search where Armada 7806 originally headed and then progressively search to the southwest. For some reason, the plan was changed on March 10 to begin the search to the southwest and progressively search to the northeast, ending where originally planned to begin.
In any event, if the debris field was not found, we are hopeful that Ocean Infinity will return to the search area in November, later this year.
Acknowledgement: This article benefited from ongoing discussions with Mike Exner, Don Thompson, Bobby Ulich, and Andrew Banks.
Tags: AUV, debris field, Malaysia, MH370, Ocean Infinity, subsea
They didn’t find anything like you told you they wouldn’t.
I wonder if you ever think back to October 2023 when I tried to tell you the truth but you were too ignorant to accept it.
I’m going to haunt you like a curse for the rest of your life.
You allude to it somewhat in your article, but if Armada 78-06 found the debris field in this phase of the search, how likely do you think it would be that they would mask that fact by continuing to search northeastward, as if nothing had been found?
Thanks in advance ….
@VictorI:
Thanks for your previous comment mention that I’m not violating physics! From fresh research, I have additional confidence in my Java anomaly candidate site. That would leave your option 2 of nothing found in the data holidays, consistent with OI continuing an expanded search. We can hope for some confirmation that a contract has been signed. Meanwhile, it would be great if OI could slow down and gather some MBES bathymetry along the unexplored 7th Arc, if they have time. And, I’ll note that the tropical Java site can be searched at any time. No need to wait until November.
@Kenyon:
The public seismic data is not hard to find. I started off a decade ago acquiring data with MATLAB/OCTAVE scripts, with encouragement from Curtin. Nowadays, Python with the Obspy library is the way to go. Acquiring Iris/FDSN data, applying instrument corrections, and polarization analysis are intrinsic functions. If you’re not up for wrangling python, then I suggest consulting with seismologists.
I’ve recently acquired public 2014 data from two very broadband ocean bottom hydrophones operated by the Australian Antarctic Survey, placed 1,500 km apart. This has opened up a whole new range of experiments and astonishing results.
So, we are not stuck with just public seismic data for confirmation. There are hydrophones, too.
@Erik Geer: If the debris field was found before the contract was signed, and announcing that it was found would in any way jeopardize the claiming the fee, there would definitely be an effort to keep that information secret.
@Ashton Forbes: Get a life. Or maybe transport yourself through a wormhole.
@Victor Iannello
You do have to feel a little sorry for Ashton, Victor. I mean, typically children start to learn that what happens in cartoons isn’t real around age five, whereas this fellow seems to have missed that realisation, and has based his entire thesis on an animation. Probably a good thing he hasn’t seen Disney’s Planes.
@Ashton Forbes
All of us have a right to our opinions. But in expressing them, I would argue that we should do so civilly, and without threatening those that we might disagree with. Please give this notion some consideration.
Thank you ….
I know next to nothing about maritime operations but I don’t think there is much significance to the change of course on march 10 other than someone making a decision based on weather forecasts for the search area. They likely knew in advance that they wouldn’t be able to cover more than half the length of the proposed area before the end of the season. By initially heading roughly for the center, they could decide spontaneously which half to go first: Center to south, center to north or – go all the way to the southern end if the weather permits it. The explanation probably lies in march 10th weather data.
@Ed,
My question wasn’t well formed. I have found multiple resources that have seismic data for thousands of events, I just can’t seem to find data for the seismometer stations listed on your website for the JA seafloor impact timeframe on March 8th. My assumption some time ago was that perhaps the magnitude wasn’t high enough for the nearby stations to report or I perhaps I wasn’t looking at the right resources.
I use python quite a bit, today found and tried ‘PyWEED’ launching it through Anaconda. Ran fine, but it reported the roughly the same info on Sage and others. Does the Sage link you provided above have the stations’ data for the date and time presented on your website? Maybe I’m not seeing the obvious?
I’m unaware of Obspy, I’ll give it a go.. Any help finding the JA seismic data or if your could publish the basic data on your website that would be most helpful. Not looking to do any sophisticated data analysis that requires a seismologist, just looking for basic data that the stations reported.
@SG: We were tracking the weather and it was fine.
@370Location
I agree with VI that your position does not violate the laws of physics. I already stated that long time ago. However, it is not the same as saying that it has high probability.
In order to reach a position so close to Indonesia and crash at so late time demands an active pilot. Not just any pilot, but an excellent one. More importantly, keeping the airplane flying for so long time means (according to the laws of physics) that there is practically no free energy left. That means absolutely no fuel, practically no potential energy, and only an absolute minimum of kinetic energy to prevent stalling.
This means that such a late crash liberates very little energy. However, the energy liberated at your location is large. It is similar to a medium size nuke (not a Hiroshima bomb).
My guess is that you most likely observed a coal chondrite meteorite falling in the sea, or perhaps a very rare type of superhot lightning strike. Most of these rare strikes happen in the intertropical convergence zone, and your position is near that zone.
Is there any chance that OI will simply refuel, change the crew, and continue the search for one more phase before November ?
I hope we can receive, at the very least, some communication from OI confirming whether the contract has been signed.
@Rachid: It seems unlikely that OI would refuel and resupply in Singapore when Fremantle is so much closer. All indications are that Armada 7806 will not return to the search area after departing Singapore.
@Kenyon:
Tom, I see why you were stymied. The PyWEED page says it is an event-based downloader, built on ObsPy. So, it cannot help with MH370. The reason I called it the Java Anomaly is because the event is among the loudest of the day even on distant hydrophones, yet it was too weak to be cataloged seismically. (Also, because even strong M5.4 quakes don’t propagate well into the SOFAR channel.) You will not find the event listed in any seismic catalog, and therefore PyWEED cannot fetch the recordings. It may have been excluded from automated cataloging because the energy content is mostly higher frequencies, which are often ignored as “anthropogenic noise” rather than quakes which typically generate very low frequency waves that travel teleseismic distances, reaching more stations for analysis.
You would need to download the data from at least those regional sites, visually “pick” the P and S wave arrivals, then use TauP model timing estimates to triangulate the epicenter. I suggest looking at rolling kurtosis for accurately picking first arrivals. I found no epicenter code at the time, so I wrote my own optimization routine. It surprisingly converged on a shallow source within 1 km of the 7th Arc. I have also gathered 48 hours of seismic records from over 4,500 seismometers globally, in case other seismic phases might reveal the surface impact. Only about 45 of the ones selected on that Sage map show a clear indication of the event. The nearest IA network geophones are restricted. GE.CISI near the Java coast has the clearest record of the event, which I sped up 60x and saved as a sound file on my website. You can use those P and S wave arrivals to estimate the distance to the event, if you just want confirmation.
I’ve sought help here at guesstimating the probability that the Java event was geologic rather then a plane impact, which is why it was originally dismissed in the first acoustic analysis as a “low level quake in the Java Trench”. The lack of a cataloged quake does shift the probability.
@Viking:
To reach the Java site while matching the BTO pings, MH370 would have been flying at a low and slow holding speed consistent with maximum endurance, not distance. I estimated it at oxygen altitude for my waypoint path. Even at fuel exhaustion, there would be quite a bit of energy in a crash, whether high speed or ditching.
Still, you seem to be confusing the timing. The Java detection is consistent with a seabed impact 55 minutes after the 7th Arc BTO, as the plane would have been sinking. Tom Kenyon has attempted to estimate the energy of a forward section of fuselage hitting the seabed, but excluded the entrained water. Surface impacts, unfortunately, do not propagate into the SOFAR channel. Here’s a report on my attempt at using lighting strikes for calibrating the hydrophone locations, thanks to a database shared with me by Viasala:
https://370location.org/2017/12/ocean-lightning-strikes-compared-with-acoustic-event-detections/
Over 10,000 of the strikes were over the Indian Ocean. Some were indeed mega-strikes, the strongest over water was -710 KiloAmperes. You can see from my map on that page that none of the storms were anywhere near the 7th Arc. Almost none of the lightning strikes were detectable in the SOFAR channel.
In his first paper on MH370, Usama Kadri thought he was detecting a meteor strike. It instead matches in direction and pattern with ice tremors. A meteor strike would also be a surface event, so not likely detectable unless it was in shallow coastal water. There were at least three surface airgun surveys (blasts every 8-12 sec) happening in the NE SIO that cluttered the soundscape. The noise is strong enough that LANL didn’t attempt to use the CTBTO Diego Garcia hydrophone array in their analysis. I instead used beamforming techniques to isolate the noise sources.
The probability of a detectable meteor strike right on the 7th Arc 55 minutes after that last ping must be infinitesimal.
Consider that Vincent Lyne studied the acoustics, but dismissed vague “talk on the internet” about a “Java Anomaly” as the result of dynamite fishing. That would also be a surface event, and the two day record contains no other “blasts” along the 7th Arc.
TLDR; I have a lot of opinions about MH370 acoustics.
@Cessi: You claim you are “informed”. I provided you with two references (my previous article and Steve Kent’s video) which give some technical explanations as to why the historical WSPR data cannot be used to track MH370 and asked you report back with any errors. You also implied on another website that I am deleting or not approving your comments, which is false.
We’d be interested in hearing your technical arguments.