Australia today inked a contract with a Dutch company to perform detailed underwater mapping of some 60,000 sq km of the Indian Ocean floor to locate the final resting place of the Malaysian jet that vanishished mysteriously over three months ago along with 239 people.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said it has awarded Fugro a contract that will see the deployment of its specialist vessel, equipment and expertise in the underwater search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
Fugro, a deep water survey company, is the first private contractor to be hired as the search enters its next phase and begins hunting underwater across an expanded zone covering 60,000 sq km in the Indian Ocean.
The announcement came after Australian and Malaysian officials met in Canberra to discuss funding and assets for the unprecedented mission. Three months of massive air and sea search in the South China Sea and the southern Indian Ocean have failed to find any sign of the Boeing 777-200 aircraft which disappeared on March 8 carrying 239 passengers and crew shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing.
Using its advanced survey vessel, the Fugro Equator, fitted with state-of-the art multibeam echosounder equipment, Fugro will conduct a bathymetric survey of the search area.
The Dutch vessel will join the Chinese navy vessel Zhu Kezhen on a mapping operation that is due to take three months.
The seabed data obtained will assist in the production of maps of the seabed offshore Western Australia. This area is relatively uncharted and the maps will assist in planning subsequent stages of the MH370 search.
"Fugro and ATSB expect the Fugro Equator to begin its operation by mid-June," the Leidschendam-based company said in a statement.
Australia's Joint Agency Coordinating Centre (JACC), which has been leading the multinational search, said a bathymetric survey will provide a map of the underwater search zone, charting the contours, depths and composition of the sea floor in water depths up to 6,000 metres.
"The survey will provide crucial information to help plan the deep water search for MH370 which is scheduled to commence in August," it said.
The search was narrowed in April after a series of acoustic pings thought to be from the plane's black box recorders were heard near where analysis of satellite data put its last location, some 1,600 km off Perth.
