how seriously do authorities take these reports? reporter: well, i think right now the right answer to that would be they re working to gain an understanding of this pe technology, until they have thatful understanding they can t assess what their level of confidence is. this is in an interesting area. right smack-dab in the middle of this newly refined search zone right on this arc that we ve shown you where the satellite data seems to indicate that this plane may have gone down. so clearly significant enough to send the hms echo to this area with its sonar technology to try to get a better handle on things. we need to also keep a close eye on what the ocean shield is doing right now. our source at the australian defense force is is very tight-lipped other than to say they are definitely looking into something. they just won t say what it is. certainly some interesting leads but we don t want to get ov overconfident here. we can see what s happened over
airliner. add to the pings that some objects were also spotted floating in the water not too terribly far from where these pulses were heard, and it definitely gets people moving. certainly it gets equipment moving towards the site. again, nothing confirmed, of course. but, again, these are clues in a sea of where there are so few. the australian official heading the multinational search mission is calling these new leads, and i will quote him, the most promising. today if you re counting is day 31 since malaysia airlines flight 370 vanished. a 777 simply vanishing. live right now in perth, australia, the headquarters of the search mission, cnn s matthew chance. joining him is david mackenzie who s live in beijing. matthew, first to you. the hms echo. the british ship is now on site. how long has it been there and do we know of any progress at
the plane, et cetera, winter approaches. the weather will call an end to it at some point. what does it entail mapping the ocean floor? . it involves the use of sonar. if you re looking at the sea floor itself and wanting a picture of symmetry, the type of underwater topography you see on google earth, you use a multi-beam sonar, echo is equipped with. if you want images of the sea floor and start at things like aircraft wreckage, you use a side scan sonar. that s deployed one of two ways, either by auv or towed array, towed sled. you could actually map the entire certainly area in about nine months if you elected to do so. all right. incredible investment of time. thank you so much to awful you. appreciate it. all right. we will have much more on this
detection. so that is why hms echo and australian defense vessel ocean shield which has special equipment which will be useful in these circumstances are proceeding to the location of the chinese ship. now all the data this becomes available to the authorities is obviously looked at very closely. but at the moment, at the moment, the data we have does not provide a means of verification. we have to we have to do further investigation on the site itself. and that is why all of these resources are being moved to that particular location. so then can you tell well, i think we just have to let the experts take their
so we obviously have to investigate it fully and we will do that and we will let you know at the completion of the process what the outcome is. i mean, we re not going to hide anything from any of you. if i can ask you, how long do you believe it will take for the hms echo and ocean shield to be to get in position and investigate this further and is this location within that southern sector that you ve now defined as being a more credible lead as to when the flight went down? yes. in answer to your last question, yes, the area is in the high probability area, yes. the second thing is in terms of how long it will take the two ships to get there, hms echo is closer. she will get there, i would