I was recently contacted by Michael Ashmore who spotted something interesting on Google Maps. About once a week, somebody finds the Earhart Electra on Google Earth or Google Maps. I always look at what they found. It's usually the Norwich City wreck or some imagined airplane shape in the bush or water, but this is a real thing and it's kind of interesting. I'd like some opinions. It will take several postings to lay out, so bear with me.
The point of interest is a spit of sand that sticks out into the lagoon from Taraia, the peninsula on the north side of the lagoon opposite the main passage (image below).
Although not a TIGHAR member, Mike Ashmore has read the TIGHAr website carefully and is familiar with our research. Back in May or June, he was looking at the shore of the lagoon on Google Maps and noticed a linear shape in the water near the Taraia sand spit (image below). He wondered if it might be airplane wreckage.
Recall that in 1997, while we were in Funafuti, former Niku schoolteacher Pulekai Songivalu told us of seeing airplane wreckage on the lagoon shore opposite the main passage (where floating wreckage washed through the passage might have ended up). This was in the 1950s and he assumed it was wreckage from WWII.
In 2007 we searched that whole shoreline with metal detectors and found nothing.
When Mike Ashmore looked at the area again July, the object was gone. (image below) Had it washed away or was it buried in sand/silt? That's when he decided to contact me and send me the screen captures he had made. My first impression was that it is probably a log, but I was curious to see if anything was visible in that location in the satellite imagery we have. We don't have imagery from 2019 but we do have June of 2018 and there appears to be something there (image below).