whips the top off the water and everything is white. reporter: now, of course, for this equipment to work, you need to have a smaller search area than what we have right now. right now, the ships that are out there are searching an area the size of poland, but the underwater, giant underwater microphone, that pinger locator can only hear a signal about a mile radius around it. so, it s really not going to do much good unless we get a better idea of where the wreckage might be, christine. will, thanks so much. will ripley for us off the coast of western australian. the ship has a very important mission, but a mission that isn t yet applicable until they find debris and can narrow down the search zone. that s the problem. so frustrating. our breaking news conference on the search for missing malaysian airlines flight 370 continues with more team coverage right after the break.
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
it will take three days to get there. on this ship is very hi-tech equipment that could be the key to solving the mystery of flight 370. they have an underwater microphone a giant microphone that can hear the ping. here s the problem. it only has a one mile radius and right now we have a search area the size paradise cove land. it s very important the aerial effort and sea effort continue to find debris to search in on that area. will riply reporting live for us on the indian ocean. four weeks after flight 370 vanished search crews have been unable to locate a single piece of debris. yesterday the australian prime minister tony abbott told us the search for that missing jet is ranching up. everyone wants to get to the bottom of this mystery. everyone is united in their common grief, in their common
insight. i want to bring you out to the indian ocean. we have been talking about the high-tech ship, the ocean shield on the way back out. will ripley is on a vessel behind the ocean shield . what is it like out there? reporter: we are going so quickly, the ocean shield is out of our sight. it is very determined to get to this search area in the indian ocean. there is a good reason why. there is just over a week left in battery life on the data recorders on flight 370. they have this great technology. this underwater microphone that can listen for the inningpings very short amount of time to search the search zone. there is a lot of concern this technology won t be effective. we don t know where to look in
tony abbott there. for now, any chance of finding flight 370 s black box may depend on this ship. it s called the old shield. it s carrying a detector that can pick up the pings by the black boxes. there is no guarantee it will be successful. we are heading away now from garden island off the coast of australia where the ocean shield began its three-day journey to the indian ocean where it will attempt to locate the wreckage of flight 370. this journey this ship has a lot of crucial technology on it. technology that could be the key to solving this mystery. there s a black box locator, a giant underwater microphone that is towed behind this boat listening for the sound from the