search, it will take many days because it is very slow and pain stalking work to scour the ocean s floor and the depths are very deep and it is very challenging. reporter: until the mechanical limits of the black box has been reached and it has been under water too long to emit a continuous ping the plan is to keep their ears to the water the priority is finding anything related to the plane. what are the crews focused on? it is about locating the pinging. ships are trying it condense the search area and sailing in different directions at different headings. the u.s. navy says ocean shield, the one pulling the toad pinger
locater is moving in a latter pattern and that means the same movement a person makes when they mow their lawn. we go search an area and we don t find anything, we can eliminate that area from additi additional searching so it is good way to focus our search assets on new areas. and right now, the most critical piece of equipment on that australian ship, ocean shield, the toad pinger locater, only works if the batteries on the black box are working. if they are dead, the machine is useless and time to guess where to jump the remote-controlled sub. we hope they find something. today could be the day as we have said over the last several weeks. new developments on the deadly mudslide in washington
day. yesterday, they described the area as the size of ireland. this is absolutely massive and it s really just an estimate. this is where we believe the plane went down with data, but we do not know if we re looking in the right place. what about the fact that they did bring in two new vessels? they also brought in a ship to locate that pinger. is that really just for protective measures? do they just have nothing to lose and they re going to put everything into the water to see if they can perhaps find something, anything? reporter: it s a little bit of both to be honest. in the ideal world, be able to find one debris and then they can deploy the toad pinger locater to try and sweep the area and pick up that signal from the black box.
that they re looking in the right area. and that the emphasis all along has been reasonably competent. remember, all of this is based on estimates, and you may remember late last week the search area which was further southwest, was moved northeast about 700 miles. so it s constantly evolving. constantly changing. but there are a large number of governments here. the resources are continuing to go up. and the prime minister of australia has said he will not let up on this is. he intends to throw as much at it as possible until they can try to bring some of these families the answer. certainly, this is based on satellite imagery. math, a lot of technology, but so far, no debris from this missing plane. and just to remind everyone, we know this ocean shield, this vessel heading out there has this toad pinger locater 25. that s what we ll be listening for. but remind all of us how many days we have before the juice in
they say they want actual hard, visual evidence of debris. otherwise they won t believe what they re hearing from the malaysian government and the malaysian airlines authorities. there s a great deal of mistrust here between the families and the authorities. and until they see that, they won t believe it. anderson? kyung, what do we know about the new piece of equipment from the united states that s arrived in perth? reporter: it s just arrived here within the last hour or so. we did get confirmation from the united states embassy in kuala lumpur that this piece of equipment, it s a high tech piece of equipment called the toad pinger locater. the best way to think about this, it s like a giant hearing aid that goes into the water and it can hear those inaudible to our ears pings coming from the black box. but here s the problem, until the debris is found, it s just going to sit here in perth, because they have to first find