Doing all of this sometimes amid what could be considered almost tropical storm conditions. so let s talk about this with christine dennison, ocean explorer, as well as captain kit darby and cnn s chad myers. first to you, chad. if i didn t already lay out the impossible, when these two ocean currents meet, it looks like a spider web for lack like a moving spider web. can you take me to where the indian ocean meets the southern ocean and what happens? i can t. the currents are what we call eddies, but they re circles. they bounce into each other and they spin around. and then we ll blow another wind on top of it of 60 or 70 miles per hour. so all of a sudden you have these eddies, you have spins, you have pieces of debris going every direction. remember, if the piece of debris happens to stick up in the water just a little bit, it s not only a current moving, it s the windage, it s a sail, it s beginning to move along with the wind as well. so those are your boxes we re talking a
This, and i am hopeful they ll have success. we have to wait for the weather to really allow them to get in and do what they do best. christine dennison, thank you for that. kit darby, your expertise is so appreciated. new satellite images of 300 pieces of debris in the south indian ocean. could be stars, could be debris. can t we do better than this? can t we photograph clearer than this? and why does it have to be hands-on before we know if that is flight 370? we re going to dig into that in just a moment. okay, listen up! i m re-workin the menu. mayo? corn dogs? you are so outta here! aah! [ female announcer ] the complete balanced nutrition of great-tasting ensure. 24 vitamins and minerals, antioxidants, and 9 grams of protein. [ bottle ] ensure®. nutrition in charge™.
Here s the graphic you re talking about. it s just absolute chaos. if i wanted to prove chaos theory, that s it right down there. now, the waves are 20 to 30 feet at times because we had a category 5 hurricane 1700 miles north, i know i said far away. gee, i said tropical storm. oh, no, this was 160-mile-per-hour cyclone making waves. you have wind on top of those waves of 30 to 40 miles per hour and you re looking for a white object. what does that ocean look like? it s a big piece of white foam. and you re trying to look for a white object. there s so many white caps. so, captain darby, you ve done this, you have thousands of flying hours. we are tasking these people with that scenario that i just set out, all of that flying no landing, incredible tricky search work, is this actually is it plausible that we should be doing this with these people? how tough is it? well, we re talking combat duty. a pilot normally protected by
Emergencies there, too. so we can t be sure what we have. i m a show-me kind of guy. i hope they can get a piece. you re not the only show-me person in this story. there are people around the world who are desperate for some indication, whether it s to assuage these just, you know, traumatized families, or just to assuage the rest of us who fly. how can this happen? 19 days out. not to suggest you re as savvy as christine dennison in oceanography, but pieces of a plane 19 days out, does this sound plausible to you? this many pieces? well, this airplane has unique construction. we ve gone to composite construction, we have improved construction techniques, i can t speak for the manufacturer. but this airplane has a greater chance of floating than any i m familiar with. it s lighter, has many airtight compartments. we re likely to find a large piece. i keep wondering with the weather and all those other factors, would they stay together. we re going to dig deep near that. stand by.
It s important to reiterate, none of this debris has been tied to the flight 370 as of now. and all we have to go on are the satellite images, because there has been no human eyesightings by the search planes or ships out there right now. joining me to talk about the significance of this potential debris field, former commercial airline pilot, kit darby in the cnn center and safety analyst, david soucie, and ocean explorer, christine dennison in new york. first, david soucie, it can t be stressed enough this is very, very encouraging. as you mentioned before, 75 feet objects. that is a common theme. we have seen that two or three times before with debris we found. and i m i m thinking that fits the profile of what would be a wing, because the length is still about right for what would be a floating area within that