20,000 feet. yeah. the advantage of these buoys, the sonobuys is they can hang just below the thermolayer. above that you can block the sound because the density of the water is different. these can be very quiet. there s no ship at all. these have no ship attached. they are dropped by an airplane and that s fantastic. just perfect quiet. the quiet is an important part of this, mary, because we have the ocean shield which obviously has been taking the lead in trying to track the pings and further pings. we ve also been told the hms echo was going to be moved into that area. i found that a little surprising just for the pure fact they wanted utter silence if possible. well, but once they move it in they will shut down absolutely all unnecessary equipment to try to maintain the silence. moving it in and getting in position will be noisy but then
plane. it landed in the water down here listening for pings, only listening, not pinging itself. these are only the passive, only the listeners back up at the top is the antenna and it sends it back up to where the airplane is. this is marine traffic.com. we have heard all about these ships out there. we can finally show you one. here is is a live picture of what ocean shield has done over the past 12 hours. it is here going back and forth over this. i have measured this square, about 47 square miles. the hms echo is in the area, it s over here still kind of staying out of the way. this is the only ship they want in this area so there are not pings and clicks and other sounds coming out of other planes and fish finders. good news now that they did find
more before they run out. this is day 34 for the batteries on the locaters. they are meant to last 30 days or so. so they are running down. the more pings they can narrow the search down. they have the ship out there towing it around. interestingly we were on a website that tracks ships a few moments ago and saw a british ship the hms echo, it is a ocean ship that can map the bottom if you like. it is headed in that direction which is interesting. we havent heard anything official on that. they might be looking at the ocean floor. that part of the indian ocean we know more about the moon s surface than we do about that floor bed, that seabed there. one of the big concerns is there is said to be meters of silt on the bottom there. if something like a flight data recorder broke free from the plane and headed in to that silt
what s the latest. we know that they ve searched that they ve narrowed that search area, but it is still slow going as they listen for more sounds, more acoustic events, as they call them, from these black boxes. reporter: that s right, christine. a short while ago, i spoke to a spokesperson from the british ministry of defense, who told me that the hms echo, which is a british vessel, is currently on its way to join the australian vessel, the ocean shield. she says it s making its way there because the ocean shield currently has the most promising leads in this search. she also said that they ve managed to discount those chinese detections made by the haixun 1 over the weekend. as for what it does when it gets there, she says that s not clear, that the ocean shield is currently taking the lead on the search.
several hundred miles further west. why? because if there was any debris, there s been a series of storms over the last few weeks, and that s the direction any debris would have gone because of those storms. now, the flight data recorders might be on the bottom where that locater is at the moment but the debris could be much further west and that s why we see ships in that area looking for debris and one ship tows the ping locater looking for the all-important black boxes. as i say, it is interesting to know the hms echo this british ship maybe heading to that area. might they be going to map and see what they can find on the ocean floor in we will find out. at some point they will have to do something else because the pinger battery will run out. we appreciate that. angus houston said he is optimistic the aircraft will be found in the not too distant future. the families of flight 370 have thaerd phrasing before. how are they handling the latest