to have to probably in consultation with everybody who has a stake in this, review what we do next. so i turn once more to colonel michael kay and christine dennison here in new york. and then also live in seattle right now, oceanographer, curt ebbsmeyer, a pioneer in flotsometrics. at what point can we no longer extrapolate, even if we find one piece of debris, where that came from and ultimately end up at an airplane? that s a good question, ashleigh. i saw your i saw the fine reporting of the people on the boat. and the winds actually will help us. the winds actually push debris in long foam lines. and so i would urge the aircraft to actually look for foam lines, and these could be for many,
i would say if they did find that, certainly that would be a positive thing. debris anything at this point. they could start to sort of trace back and see it. colonel kay, if you re flying, and i would love you to react specifically to what curt ebbsmeyer reported to us, and that is that this kind of weather causes foam lines, not debris fields. he says it s helpful. and you re the guy spotting this stuff before. is it? yeah, i think it s a great point brought up. and obviously going to be more identifiable from the air and morality attitude you can get, the more likelihood of spotting one of these foam lines. if you ve got a sea state where you ve got high waves, pitching through crests and troughs, those foam lines are going to be disbursed. so i think the foam lines are more identifiable when the conditions calm. and that will be the time to seize the opportunity to look at these. but in order to identify them from the air, the mist has got to go, the fog has got to go, the cl
take oceanographic data and backtrack where that came from with a fair degree of accuracy. certainly more optimistic than a lot of the reporting i hear, which is great to hear. i want to bring christine into that conversation. she is the person who usually is out there on the water. we saw the conditions of the water. we saw the troughs, how hard it is to spot. and then curt says look for foam lines. are those easier to spot than massive debris fields when you re looking at those particular conditions? i think at this point, anything that they can spot, they can identify, and then sort of pursue and if they have to track it and chase it around. they re going to do it. at this point, what we re refusing to as far as the splash zone is really a point of impact, which is what they would ideally either trace back do you think a foam line, if it were found now, to lead you to a splash zone? after 25 days of look at that. just look at your screen. look what they re going through ju
many miles long. and the debris might be concealed within the foam. so i ve been on searches like this before, not for aircraft, but for other things. and these foam lines are often places where turtle eggs and oil and so forth cumulate. so i would urge that people look for foam lines, and the winds are the best ways for nature to make foam lines. as to your question, what pie piece i hope we luck out and the searchers luck out and find a piece like the air france tail, but it s likely pieces could be small and could be now with the wind conditions, in foam lines. so it may be hard to actually pick out the pieces. so i m hoping we actually see some clearly identifiable pieces. right now what s missing is ground truth. if we actually have a piece from the aircraft that is clearly from the aircraft, then we can