The latest Amelia Earhart search has hit a weather wall in the South Pacific. Rough seas have kept the Taraia Object expedition team from going ashore on Nikumaroro, an uninhabited atoll in Kiribati, for three straight days, and the crew has decided to extend its trip until it can finish fieldwork on a lagoon anomaly that may be the remains of Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10-E, Purdue University said in its latest update.
No identification has been made. Purdue said the identity of the Taraia Object will not be known until the team can safely complete at least two more days of field operations. The forecast for Sunday and Monday looked promising, and the expedition vessel has enough fuel and food for the longer stay, according to the university’s update. Nikumaroro is 17 hours ahead of Eastern time.
What the Taraia Object is
The Taraia Object is a visual anomaly in Nikumaroro’s lagoon. It was first noticed in satellite imagery in 2020 and later confirmed to be visible in aerial photos of the lagoon taken as far back as 1938, according to Purdue. Based on estimates from aerial photos, it is believed to sit only about 10 feet from the lagoon’s shore, under as little as 5 feet of water depending on the tide, plus a layer of sediment of unknown depth.
The search is built on the “castaway hypothesis,” the theory that Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan landed on Nikumaroro after failing to find Howland Island in July 1937. Nikumaroro lies close to 400 miles southeast of Howland, which was their planned destination on the third-to-last leg of Earhart’s round-the-world flight. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery spent nearly 40 years documenting that hypothesis, and the Taraia Object research builds on that work, Purdue said.
Who is running the Amelia Earhart search
The expedition is a joint effort of the Archaeological Legacy Institute, the Purdue Research Foundation and Purdue University. The 17-person expedition team, backed by a 17-person boat crew, arrived at Nikumaroro on Oct. 12 after a five-day, 830-nautical-mile voyage from Tarawa, according to Purdue’s arrival update.
Purdue’s role has deep roots. Earhart joined the university in 1935 and spent two years there as a women’s career counselor and adviser in the aeronautics department. The Purdue Research Foundation, through the Amelia Earhart Fund for Aeronautical Research, paid for the Electra she called her “Flying Laboratory,” and she intended for the plane to return to Purdue after her flight.
What the team has done so far
On Wednesday, Oct. 14, marine archaeologists from RECON Offshore completed an initial underwater survey of the research area in the lagoon using a magnetometer and sonar. Other team members did land-based archaeology and finished setting up a solar-powered system that will stay on the island to report weather and tide conditions.
Then the weather turned. Beginning Thursday, Oct. 15, wind and rough seas made it unsafe for the team to use transport boats between their ship, the Marin Mainiku, and the island, Aero-News Network reported. Purdue said squalls brought winds up to 20 knots, about 23 mph, with gusts up to 27 knots, about 31 mph, and that El Niño conditions in the South Pacific make getting across the island’s reef even harder.
Reaching the beach is risky even on a calm day. The ship idles up to a mile offshore, and the transport boat must run through the “blasted channel,” a narrow passage on the island’s southwest side that the British cut to evacuate settlers in 1963, the last time Nikumaroro was inhabited.
What happens next
When the team can return to the island’s Taraia Peninsula, the plan is to use a hydroprobe to make direct contact with the object and gauge its depth, orientation and surface, followed by a water injection dredge to clear away sediment for a visual inspection. Purdue has said an identification update is expected after those operations.
“We know many people around the world are watching and awaiting updates,” said Rick Pettigrew, executive director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute. “We are committed to sharing information as soon as we are able, while ensuring it is accurate and appropriate to release. Above all, the safety of our team and the ship’s crew is our No. 1 priority.”
Earhart’s Boston-area roots
Before she became a global aviation star, Earhart lived in Medford and worked in Boston. In 1925 she took a job as a teacher and then a social worker at Denison House, a Boston settlement house. She flew out of Dennison Airport in Quincy, invested a small sum in the airfield and flew its first official flight in 1927, according to her biography on Wikipedia. In June 1928, the journey that made her the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, as a passenger aboard the Friendship, began in East Boston.
Nearly 90 years after she vanished, her disappearance remains one of aviation’s best-known mysteries. For more of today’s science and discovery news, read about astronomers finding the first green star and CERN’s new AI physics partnership with Mistral.
Featured image: Amelia Earhart stands under the nose of her Lockheed Model 10-E Electra. Photo by Underwood & Underwood, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Sources
- Purdue University: Weather prevents shore work for third straight day; crew to extend trip
- Purdue University: Underwater survey of Taraia Object begins
- Purdue University: Crew arrives at Nikumaroro
- Aero-News Network: Weather prevents shore work Thursday
- Wikipedia: Amelia Earhart
- Wikimedia Commons: Amelia Earhart under the nose of her Electra
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