these signals coming from what they believe are these two black box, what happens now? the next step is they keep on listening for more pings hopefully. the search area is dramatically smaller today even than yesterday. we re talking about an area that s still quite large, 500 square miles. the ocean shield is draggin tow locator. it can cover a lot more ground than the other piece of equipment on that ship, the underwater submersiblsubmersibl bluefin 21. the tpl can do about six times the work in a day that the bluefin can do. if they keep listening for pings, each time they hear would be, they can narrow down more and more where this debris might be, and only when they re absolutely certain that the black boxes they believe are somewhere on the bottom of the indian ocean in this area, only when they believe those black boxes have stopped emitting a signal will they then deploy
immediate area and continues to try and regain contact with the towed pinger locator. to this point, it has not been able to reacquire the signals. this are many steps yet before these detections can be positively verified as being from missing flight mh 370. firstly, we need to fix the position. then the ocean shield can lower the autonomous underwater vehicle bluefin 21 into the water and attempt to locate wreckage on the sea floor. another source of evidence search as wreckage would verify this lead. the area in which the signals have been received has a depth of approximately 4,500 meters. this is also the limited
do not worry about the other search areas because the aircraft had been looking for wreckage on the surface and had been taking a count of 30 days of oceanic drift. but the satellite has essentially given us this area here as the most likely place where mh 370 entered the water. now, what is significant about this is that yesterday or a couple of days ago, haixun 01 had its encounter with the electronic pulse in this location here. ocean shield is currently working up in this location there. so all of the search underwater is being enabled by that wonderful work that was done by
has now arrive at the spot where the two pulse signals were picked up. on board the hms echo high detection gear. just north, just north-northeast of there, i should say, the australian ship ocean shield is continuing its investigations, trying to figure out the source of a curious, quote, acoustic event. and today another question is emerging. did the plane try to avoid indonesian airspace? a senior malaysian government source has come out with an explosive allegation that flight 370 apparently steered a suspicious course to avoid indonesian radar. and for the latest on the search, i want to go to perth, where the news conference is soon to be taking place, and that senior international correspondent matthew chance. so matthew, do you have any clues as to what this impromptu press briefing may be about? not really. i mean, i ve spoken to the press office there, and they ve said
i stated that the ocean shield would be delayed from going to the approximate area where the haixun 01 had detected the signals while she continued her own investigations. today i can report some very encouraging information which has unfolded over the last 24 hours. the towed pinger locator deployed from the australian defense vessel ocean shield has detected signals consistent with those emitted by aircraft black boxes. two separate signal detections have occurred within the northern part of the defined search area. the first detect was held for approximately two hours and 20 minutes. the ship then lost contact before conducting a turn and attempting to reacquire the signal.