but as we ve now had time to look more thoroughly at the data and do that at leisure and with the capacity to be able to analyze every item of information in great detail, we re satisfied the search would have been better located in the orange area that is identified on the map. if we could have spent the time to actually do all the work that s being done now, we probably would have chosen the area that s identified now, but, of course, when there was actually beeps picked up, that led everybody to want to concentrate their effort on the area where those beeps had actually been found. can you give us more perspective, the new search area, how far off the coast is it? it s a very long way. it s about 2,000 k s, isn t it?
we had all the information available to access the search area. what s your understanding from going over the area, of the sort of undersea terrain? what sort of range of depths are the depths and gullies. we re starting the work, there s some very broad mapping available. which you can see from that map there. the general trend toward broken ridge is rising and reasonably smooth. but we don t know the details of the topography below that. it may have unevenness, that s what we need to find out. as it heads south toward broken ridge, it becomes much more challenging terrain in terms of the unevenness. there s a mix of did you say broken ridge? in through there, and it raises up relatively gently, as i understand it, to broken ridge, and it falls away abruptly. there s a trench through there as well, and who knows how deep that is.
not calculated in but have been now. the independent search area is south of the most recent searched area. and it s north of where the where the original search area was. it s kind of in between the two where there s never been any searching going on at all. i m encouraged they may find something there. a new search area, what kind of equipment would be used here? well, they re going to do keep their plan of the course of to map the ocean floor first. so the chinese have had a ship there mapping, additional assets to map the floor first, and then they will deploy the submersibles, except they will be using next time subomers thabls are capable of operation submersibles that are capable of operations at greater depths. one the mapping is done, they ll be able to send them back in. they re still in the process of taking bids from private groups or private or not for private groups. but they re looking for an outside group to carry on that search with the underwater robotic v
learned a great deal out of this situation. we have learned how not to do things and how to do things we have never done before. i think aviation will benefit from this somehow. let s get accuracy on the radar. we have learned so little in seven weeks. i m don lemon, thank you for watching tonight. see you back tomorrow night. ac good evening, john berman in for anderson, and we begin with breaking news right now. we could get word that the likeliest place to find the flight 370 could be over. they were going back and forth in the targeted area. as of yesterday they searched 90% of that area, so tonight it is either done or very close to it. we re waiting to hear. and we re talking about what the next step could be. we also have an exclusive interview with the prime minister of malaysia, in the
anything on the ocean floor? well, it is very possible, john, that they just missed them. that they are outside the search circle that they have been focusing in on. that is a possibility. it is a possibility that there is someplace different, but in that vicinity, the ocean is playing tricks with the sound. it is a different thing. i argued it all along. if they do believe the pings are from the black boxes, how do they leave the area, even if they have to expand the circle two or three times to make the bull s eye bigger. may have to expand it two or three times and that could take some time, at least two or three weeks, when they get advanced in that area to keep searching. guys thank you very much. as always you will find much more on this story and others at cnn.com. up next, how the search for steve fosset s plane happened. plus, more news out of south korea, more bodies recovered as the criminal investigation heats