prime minister and the head of the search, angus houston, believe are from the flight data recorders. the ocean shield still towing that ping locator on loan from the u.s. navy. also in that little tighter area, where they did get those pings, there s the british ship, the hms echo, which is an oceanographic ship, it has a two-mile wide beam, if you like that it can put down and try to get back information from the ground floor, and see if it can locate any wreckage. no luck so far. don, this is a very long and involved process, and isn t by far over. joe johns in kuala lumpur. if and when these black boxes are found, who will take custody of them and the get the information from them? reporter: well, it s pretty clear the malaysia government has the authority to at least lead the investigation, but they ve already said they are going to need help. they are going to need expertise from other countries. the three we know that can
geoffry. will that lead this investigation? there s two elements to this. which probably haven t the two elements to this now. if we get no more pings, then we have to go to the bluefin-21 which has been talked about. however, there s one other asset that is working in this area which is the hms echo. that s in the pinger search zone with our australian ocean shield which is towing the pinger locater. the hms echo is using echoes off the bottom. the bottom at this area is silt. they re hoping a large metal object like a big large airplane will give them a different sort of return, a more positive return. and that may shorten dramatically the search. because the hms echo unlike
withholding some detail about this search ahead of that meeting with the chinese president later today. as for the search itself, the angus houston, the ma not responsible for this the man responsible for this joint coordination effort, issued a statement today. he s in fact, right now they re behind me in the building behind me coordinating all of these efforts. he said that the statement saying that the ocean shield, the australian vessel, is continuing to comb the water with the american towed pinger locator trying to pick up signals. interestingly enough, according to marinetraffic.com, a website that tracks in real time marine vessels, it shows that the ocean shield has moved some kilometers outside of the search area. and the hms echo, a british vessel, has moved interest the center of it. now the hms echo is equipped with sophisticated audio detection technology.
not a single, physical sign of the plane has been found. so the focus of this search effort very much on for the elusive pings. overnight, they have been analyzing this data that they have obtained from one of the sonobuoys, one of the dozens or so that they have parachuted out onto the water. they said they hope to get an update on that today. meanwhile, the australian vessel, the ocean shield, continues to be out there combing the waters with the american operator, the towed pinger locator, making detections, four so far which have given so much promise to the search area. we also know the british vessel, the hms echo with the equipment is joining in that effort. really, the goal here is to obtain as much information from the pings as possible to be able to narrow down a potential
the search effort. how involved is malaysia in the search area? you know malaysia and malaysian officials get the first briefings. they get told what happens at sea from ocean shield, hms echo, all the other vessels from the sonar buoys that are out there. they get that information before anyone else. but the search teams generally report it on the ground first. they re recovering it. they ve got the expertise and the malaysians sometimes respond to that. they are in that information circle and they are, we are told, the first to get the information. the investigation continues on the ground in malaysia. is there any update? have they found out anything new? are they sitting back and waiting for the black boxes to be recovered? the black boxes are going to be an important part of the investigation.