feet under water but only works for eight hours. schl onobuoys were not designed for this kind of mission. the ones that i m familiar with generally have very poor response to frequencies as high as 37 kilohertz. they are more for detecting mechanical signals from submarines, 1 kilohert or lower. reporter: the search continues to intensify. the british ship hms echo is now focusing where the pings have been detected. but crews continue to listen for even more pings to shrink the search zone. a smaller zone is necessary. the underwater vehicle can only search 40 square miles a day. that means the roughly 500-square mile area over a span
four, half a dozen more pings to start to narrow that search area down from the 500 square miles that rene reported it currently is. and, rene, you re there for us still. what are you hearing from your sources right now? do they anticipate that, you know, the next few hours they re going to be able to announce maybe there have been some more pings? you know, at this point, we don t know if there have been any more pings. we do know that hms echo now in the vicinity, wolf. we know that it has the capability of listening as well. it has passive sonar. also has the ability to map the ocean floor. although they haven t given us much detail as far as what the specific task of hms echo will be in the area. we know that the ocean shield is leading the charge as far as using the pinger locator to pick up more pings. but we ll just have to wait. we re hoping to get more information as these press conferences happen.
area, i guess that is the planned search area where the ships are. the ocean shield, they re actually adding more assets to the under water area adding a british ship. the hms echo, and of course the chinese ship that reported the oppositions over the weekend. and in the same southerly location, also the same inmarsat also makes sense. and while those pings were picked up by a device the chinese were using, it is nonetheless something that you want to check out. and so they are scanning in that location. haven t heard anything from that location yet. i m told by the experts that it it is a separate thing regardless. if they heard pings there it is probably not the same point of originatation as the location where the ocean shield is. david, at this point, do you think they re going to be at this for sometime since they have not heard these pings again
has said that the ocean s shield find is the most promising lead at this point. the signals they detected in deeper waters were more indicative of the two black box signals. but they are exhausting every lead. and the joint agency coordination center is putting out a press release today, this morning saying that the hms echo, the british vessel is still in the area of the find. they re still investigating, we are expecting a press conference shortly. hopefully we ll get more details on that, jake. all right, erin mclaughlin, in perth, australia, thank you so much. i want to bring in the panel in the latest search for flight 370. david souci is the author of the book why planes crash. and the captain is the former director of the safety for the coalition of airline pilots
[ inaudible ] i understand there s been no further detections in the area where the chinese vessel assisted by hms echo, which is an oceanographic vessel from the royal navy. i believe they haven t made any further detections. in terms of the analysis of the signals that it picked up, i ll come back to you on that. i m not sure where we are at with that. i haven t had any advice that the analysis is complete at this stage. when you began this search and looking at the odds, the size of the ocean, the size of the search area, what do you think the chances are that you would make an announcement like this today? well, i would say very