reporter: yeah, well, we re now about two hours away, less than two hours away from this scheduled departure of the ocean shield, an australian ship that is normally used for humanitarian purposes but is being tooled with those high-tech tools from the navy for this search mission. after they take off from sterling air base here on garden island, which is western australia s biggest air base, they re going to be heading to rot nest island where they ll be conducting some tests, making sure this equipment works properly before they head out towards the indian ocean search area. it will take about three days to get there. the captain of the boat that we re on has been talking a lot about these pretty challenging weather conditions the ship could face. the water s only about 100 feet deep right here. out there, it s 14,000 feet deep and things can get really ugly in a hurry. some days it s really calm, but other days it s absolutely wild. that s why the air force can t fly sometimes
the extraordinarily difficult place to work. not only is it far remote from the australian coast, the weather is rough as we ve just heard. and that s the best part. because once you go below the surface of the ocean, it gets a great deal worse. the ocean there is between 10,000 and 12,000 feet deep. that applies thousands of pounds per square inch of pressure to anything that sinks there. you can imagine, for example, a foam seat from the aircraft. at those pressures, if it s carries downed with the debris, it s going to squeeze all the air out, completely collapse it. anything that s there is likely to be significantly deformed by the time it reaches the bottom. and then finding it is going to be exceptional hi difficult. jeff, you think a little differently. i know you know what they re up against. you think that there should be something, if not this is a 400-seat airplane, you said there should be something, a seat, something we should be able to find. right. imagine a sho
24,000 feet deep. so that s a very deep area in that part of the ocean. also we do have a plateau that s located off the coast of western australia. that s a naturalist plateau. that is less deep. 9700 feet deep. the deepest part, though, teacher than 16,000 feet. so a lot of variables across parts of the southern indian ocean. temperature wise, it s relatively warm on average. about 70 degrees fahrenheit. but because the area we re looking at is so far south and areas south of 40 degrees latitude, you do see temperatures dropping quickly. we could see temperatures there at about 50 degrees fahrenheit. possibly even colder. ocean currents out here flow in a counter clockwise direction across parts of the southern indian ocean. so in that particular area, the ocean current would flow from west to east, meaning we could be looking at an impact area, if this does happen to be the area where the plane crashed, we could be looking at that crash
so it limits what we can gartth. there is an area of low pressure he headed eastward and it is forecast today head sunday and then quite weather before the next system moving in monday at 3 p.m. eastern time. so several storm systems are going to continue to hit the area why watching with rough seas and a lot of cloud cover and poor visibility, stormy conditions and high ocean waves. 10-20 foot waves across the region. the ocean floor is very deep. up to 12,000 feet deep and other trenches surrounding the region could be as deep as 24,000 feet deep and the ocean currant flows
nic robertson, tell me more about what was discovered and more of what we learned about osama bin laden. reporter: here is the big picture that emerges from here. it is only part of the big picture. 17 of 6,000 documents. it is a partial picture of bin laden. it is bin laden struggling with the affiliates. he is trying to chastise them and give them direction. one of the big eye openers there is bin laden was jealous of some of his rising stars. anwar al awlaki, the yemeni cleric accused on some of the attacks of the united states. talks about al awlaki to take over leadership there. bin laden says i hear what you are saying, but where i come from, we like to see people tested on the battle field first. he hadn t been to the battle field. you can see the jealousies emerging. you talk about paranoia. it is fascinating when you read through the documents. did you find anything in there that showed that bin laden knew al qaeda was getting weaker and the u.s. was stronger? he