there a number that could confound the efforts to listen for the pinger. why more so now than ever. seismic surveys and the navies do a number of sonar activities that are disturbing to the marine life. the ocean noise is another type of collision and the debro that hampered the search. we are learning so much about the ocean from this particular story. we know that the ocean shield carrying a u.s. pinger locator will be inside the box and that means the search area. what kind of ocean conditions do searchers need in the coming hours to position this for the best success possible? you need the surface conditions and this might be more robust and they are certainly much more robust than the submercible vehicles that
you re off garden island. what body of water have you been and how far have you gone? how far have you gone since you left shore? so right now we re still we re close to garden island. and what do we actually call this port, guys? hold on. i m going to bring on our affiliate from channel 7 here, because you re the expert. i know this is the australian naval base. introduce yourself and tell what s body of water we re in right now. i know we re going to be heading out to the indian ocean. this is the biggest naval base in western australia and the center of the operation for the naval search in the indian ocean. and specifically right now, we re not out in the ocean yet. would this be the fremantle harbor that we re still in? correct. we re in the sound between the sterling and the main west australian coast. so you have been out on these waters before. how long does it take to get out of this area and when we start heading out on the indian area? the area is protected by
offshore. you sort of have bay conditions until you get beyond that once you re beyond you re in ocean conditions and the waves can double or triple more once you re out there. so we re actually sharing this boat with our cnn affiliate, channel 7, one of the major stations here in australia. ya they re going to be broadcasting here as well. it s one thing to stand at the air base and talk about it. it s another thing to actually be out here, getting ready to head out on the indian ocean, getting ready to shadow this ship that for a lot of people, this is what they re feeling is our best hope in finding something. will ripley, thank you very much. we re going to get back to you. great job. don t go away. i think it s fascinating to watch and to see, really, how the efforts happen, how fast they can go. what resources they re using, what technology they re using. and we have that live for you right here on cnn. you re getting your first look at this. and you can see the worldwide res
ocean or any ocean, for that matter, if this is lying underneath the wreckage of a plane or this is buried in the mud and you re talking two to three miles down, it s very difficult, if not impossible, for a sonar or hydrophone to pick up that pinger. we ve talked about the fact there s only about another two weeks or so, maybe a little more, of battery life left in the pinger. the ocean conditions down here, and these are very, very difficult waters. we ve talked to several experts who say it s like a constant moving and taking and moving back and forth with the water. it s very difficult to get a good sense of where things might have tracked. here s another statistic that kind of shocked me when i heard it, every year, at least a dozen or so cargo ships sink in the world and most of them, or a good number of them, sink in the indian ocean because it is so
debris on the surface of the ocean. if you re trying to find debris on the bottom of the abyssal oceans that haystack is on the dark side of the moon. it s a deliberate analogy because we don t know that much about most of the abyssal oceans. it s equivalent to what we know about the dark side of the moon. noaa, national oceans and atmospheric administration, maintains a system of buoys around the world in the oceans that provide realtime data about what s going on in the oceans. and unfortunately that part of the southern indian ocean is one of the worst-covered areas in terms of providing realtime data about ocean conditions. and it s very poorly surveyed on the bottom. and it s a tremendously difficult place to look for anything. alastair and everyone else, stick around because when we come right back we re going to get more of your questions. everything from black boxes to how much this search is costing. that s next. [ male announcer ] we all think about life insurance.