that i was telling you about. as far as our boat here, as we continue to kind of move away from the ocean shield, if we have enough cable, let me take you inside and show you how we steer this thing. we ll give it a go, don. we walk you in here. this is the living quarters. yeah, we can t make it. don, when we get our cable situation figured out, we ll get you in there a little later. captain ray ruby. yep. i don t expect you to go inside. but we like looking out into the water, will. we re going to keep you around for our panel, okay? so stand by. don t go anywhere. and let us see out of the back there and let us see the ship that is going to be searching behind us, the ocean shield behind you. so we re coming back to will ripley. this is fascinating information that we re getting, fascinating pictures coming from will ripley who is out on the search right now. i want to get to atika shubert right now. you have been there for the search for a while reporting on
be. and for that reason, they ve now appointed angus houston as the coordinator for that investigation out here. he is just being briefed today. but hopefully we ll have more details on where that investigation and search is leading tomorrow, don. atika shubert with that investigation. thank you very much. i want to bring in my panel of experts now. colleen keller, whose work was instrumental in finding the wreckage of air france flight 447 three years ago. and jeffrey thomas runs a website that keeps an eye on airline safety around the world. lest abomb, a 777 pilot and military aviator. and we also have will ripley who is out in the water now with the traveling, shadowing the ocean shield. and he will be showing what s is going on there. you see the ocean shield there behind him. you think it s a military vessel. it s not a military vessel. do you think this is maybe the best hope yet to find something?
today, as many ships. but it s also exhausting every day. so how long can this be sustained realistically? the effort is ramping up, not winding down. we ll have more aircraft in the sky tomorrow. we ve got more ships in the area. so we are ramping this effort up. we owe to it the families of the 239 people on board. we owe to it the anxious governments that want to know what happened to their citizens. we owe it to everyone who travels by air and wants the skies to be safe. we owe to it the whole world, which has been transfixed by this mystery now for some time. we owe it to everything to everyone to find out as much as we can. that s exactly what australia is doing. the key here is australia is not only coordinating the search, but also now the investigation. so anything that is actually found out in the water will be brought here to perth. and this is where the center of the investigation will really
naval base on their western coast. the reason we re here is because we re monitoring the movements here of ocean shield. you see it. you can t miss it, really, it s bright red, docked here at the naval base. it arrived here over the weekend. crews have been very busy here. they ve been outfitting this ship with u.s. navy technology that we hope is going to really help in this search. there is the tpl, that towed pinger locator. it s basically a giant underwater microphone. you tow it behind the ship and it listens for the fading ping from the cockpit voice recorder and inflight data reporter. this is critical in the next few days because we know about a week left. that s how much battery life there is before those pings stop. when the pings stop, there is another piece of technology in the ocean field called the bluefin 21. basically, it s an underwater drone. this thing can go down under water and scan the bottom of the ocean. it can map out if there is any debris. great technology, b
earlier. you need a small search area for this to be effective. they can cover about 50 miles a day. with the time frame we re look at here, they need about a thousand square mile area to cover in about a week. that s about as much as they can do. we re looking at a search area well over 100,000 square miles. so until we can narrow down where debris essentially is, potentially the ocean shield with all its technology will be looking for a visual search just like the one thousand sailors on the eight ships which are currently out in the search area 1100 miles from here, don. will ripley, we have you out here. and it s fascinating to see the search ongoing and a lave shot. show us around, will you, so our viewers can see exactly where you are. sure. so we re on a charter fishing boat called thunder down under. this normally they use for fishing tours. but right now as we have outfitted it with mobile technology. you can see the australian navy is here right now. they are making sure