Perth: An oil slick had been spotted in the search area of missing MH370 with around two litres of fuel collected for testing. Angus Houston, who fronts the Joint Agency Coordination Centre said although, “the source of the oil is yet to be determined, the slick is approximately 5,500 metres downwindâ€. The detected was made by the towed pinger locator on Ocean Shield”.
The reports come as Australia announced its deployment of a mini-sub for the search of missing Malaysian jet flight MH370 on Monday. “Ocean Shield will cease searching with the towed pinger locator later today and deploy the autonomous underwater vehicle Bluefin-21 as soon as possible,” said Angus Houston.
Houston said that in the hunt for the plane’s black box transmissions the last signal was logged six days ago. “We haven’t had a single detection in six days so I guess it’s time to go underwater,” he said at a press conference in Perth.
He emphasised that it was 38 days since the Boeing 777 vanished on March 8 and the black box batteries had a shelf life of only 30 days.
The US-made Bluefin-21, a 4.93-metre (16.2 feet) long sonar device will now scour the seabed. The sonar device, which weighs 750 kilograms, can operate at a depth of up to 4,500 metres — roughly the depth of the ocean floor where the pings were detected.
(With AFP inputs)