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SOUTH TARAWA, Kiribati — A sonar image of an object in the Pacific Ocean may represent the remains of Amelia Earhart's long-sought-after plane wreckage.
The image, released by the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), was captured last year off the coast of an uninhabited mid-Pacific island in the Republic of Kiribati. It shows an "anomaly" about 600 feet underwater that may be the remains of Earhart's aircraft, a Lockheed Electra 10E.
The anomaly is a line in what is otherwise a smooth area 350 miles southeast of Earhart's target destination, Howland Island. Earhart, the first female pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, was attempting a circumnavigational flight in 1937 when she disappeared near Howland Island.
The sonar image captured by TIGHAR researchers shows a strong return from a 22-foot-long narrow object at the base of an underwater cliff. The object, oriented southwest-northeast, is higher on the southwest side, shadows indicate.
"What initially got our attention is that there is no other sonar return like it in the entire body of data collected," Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, told Discovery News. "It is truly an anomaly, and when you're looking for man-made objects against a natural background, anomalies are good," he added.
Gillespie took a team in 2012 to Nikumaroro Island in the Republic of Kiribati after it was discovered a photo taken in 1937 showed something protruding from the water. It was the resulting sonar image that led to the discovery of what could be the plane's remains.
TIGHAR representatives said that so far, "the harder we've looked at this anomaly, the better it looks." But the group does not claim the discovery is definitely the Electra.
"Maybe the anomaly is a coral feature that just happens to give a sonar return unlike any other coral feature on the entire reef slope," a representative for the group wrote. "Maybe it's a sunken fishing boat that isn't mentioned in any of the historical literature. Maybe it's the boat nobody knows about that that brought the castaway nobody missed who died at the Seven Site. Maybe it's pure coincidence that it‘s the right size and shape to be the Electra wreckage — the Electra that so much other evidence suggests should be in that location."
