From the newsletter of the Nai'a, the ship TIGHAR has used for many expeditions to Nikumaroro.
Nice of them to make the fund raising pitch.
amck
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Finding Amelia
NAI’A’s relationship with TIGHAR and the Phoenix Islands goes all the way back to 1997 when we made the five-day passage to Nikumaroro for the first time, supporting TIGHAR on their “once and for all” expedition to find Amelia Earhart.
But they didn’t find her. They found some tantalizing clues, but no smoking gun. Two years later they chartered NAI’A to go back to Nikumaroro. Then again in September, 2001, where the team heard about the world-changing events in America via satphone from about the most remote vantage there is. NAI’A took TIGHAR back to Nikumaroro again in 2007 and finally in 2010 before their search outgrew us.
An accidental side effect of these expeditions is that we discovered an underwater ocean oasis like no-one had ever seen. So between TIGHAR expeditions, NAI’A returned to the Phoenix Islands to document the robust marine ecosystem there. Research expeditions in 2000 and 2002 led directly to Kiribati’s decision to create the Phoenix Islands Protected Area and in 2010 the Phoenix Islands became the world’s largest marine World Heritage Site. For more details, see our website: Phoenix Islands.
We swallowed the TIGHAR cool-aid a long time ago. Their evidence for where and why Amelia crashed makes complete sense to us and, having been to Nikumaroro nine times, we completely understand why finding her isn’t as easy as strolling down the beach to where the airplane wreckage lies. All of the evidence points to Amelia’s airplane having been high and dry for several days before disappearing from the radio waves and from the sight of Navy aviators who flew over Nikumaroro a week after she disappeared. Her plane must have been washed off the reef edge, probably by waves like those we encountered at Nikumaroro on our first expedition in 1997.
We’ve dived deeper than you really ought to all along the slope where Amelia’s plane most likely crash landed. And we put small ROVs in the water to look even deeper. But the reef slope is so steep and deep that a proper search takes serious technology beyond what NAI’A can support. TIGHAR went back to Nikumaroro two years ago on a University of Hawaii research ship and their AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) identified a series of sonar hits that are the right size and shape for Amelia’s Electra, sitting on a shelf at 380 meters. Technological snafus resulted in the information being hidden until the post-voyage analysis, so no-one has put eyes on it yet.
TIGHAR has an expedition all teed up to go back to Nikumaroro this year on the same University of Hawaii ship to take two three-person subs down to check out the sonar signature. But big ships and submarines are expensive (although I’m amazed how good a deal UH is offering) and TIGHAR needs to raise more than a million dollars in the next 11 days to pay for the expedition. This expedition has nothing at all to do with NAI’A, but we would love for TIGHAR to find Amelia’s plane, for once and for all!
TIGHAR has organized a crowdfunding project with Indiegogo and if you are interested in helping support this expedition, please go to
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/we-can-find-amelia-earhart.
Best fishes from Rob Barrel and the NAI'A Family
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