TIGHAR
Amelia Earhart Search Forum => General discussion => Topic started by: Randy Conrad on October 20, 2019, 08:22:40 PM
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Just finished watching National Geographics 2-hour feature with Bob Ballard and "Expedition Amelia". Also including a cast of important cast members....with Ric,Tom, and Andrew! This was not only a milestone but a Masterpiece for both Tighar and National Geographic. Loved the way it told the life and times of Amelia and then came back to the island. One thing that caught my eye was the ruggedness of the reef slope and how fast it fell off to the bottom of the ocean. All the data and scientific evidence, documents, and artifacts, are before us... so where are you Miss Amelia....where are You? The feature brought out tonight was highly done on both parts. A true to his character that Bob Ballard is. If you haven't seen it yet...It truly is a must see!!!
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I thought the show covered TIGHAR in glory. Two of the features that Bob Ballard singled out as key evidence--the radio signals and the wheel assembly shown in the photograph--were the result of TIGHAR analysis. And NG was scrupulous in giving credit to TIGHAR where it was due, with lots of screen time devoted to our people. One little mystery - toward the end, when the meticulous combing of the seabed had not yielded any evidence, Bob Ballard said resolutely, "Now I know what to do." I was expecting some revelation in the waning minutes of the show, but none came to pass. So I guess whatever he had in mind did not materialize.
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Were they expecting pieces of sheet metal to be resting on top of coral dust after 80 years? Anything down there is buried under coral dust or under Norwich City steel.
Re the Tarawa skull I don’t think they made the logic clear enough. To the layperson, watching the show while fiddling with their iphone or whatever, the DNA test and other analysis seems to say that the Gardner skull was not Amelia. To me, the results said the Tarawa skull was probably not the Gardner skull, and the 13 bones are still lost.
I would have liked to see more time spent on the aluminum patch.
I’m glad that they only gave the wackadoodle conspiracy theories about 3 seconds of time, with Ballard saying “you can throw them out”. That helps shut the door on those silly theories.
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Ground penetrating radar around the ren tree might have helped. I can't remember - did TIGHAR do that already?
L
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Leon White Here.
Looks like I was dead wrong about the images I posted in this message earlier. Thanks to Andrew for providing the information about the item with holes in it.
L
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Ground penetrating radar around the ren tree might have helped. I can't remember - did TIGHAR do that already?
L
Yes, been there and done that. The coral rubble environment utterly defeated GPR. We couldn't even find bottles we buried at 12".
Another technology defeated by Nikumaroro.
Andrew
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Leon White here.
I have a serious request to make of other TIGHAR members. I'd like to know whether the pictures attached are of 1) Coral (underneath the obvious coral dust), 2) Debris from other expeditions, 3) sheet aluminum with pitting, but also geometric shapes or 4) "Other." I would be very grateful for your numerical response.
Leon
That object is part of a sonar fish that TIGHAR lost during the 1991 Expedition. It is stainless steel, and matches the rest of the fish that they didn't really highlight, but was visible on the table when Ballard was examining it. See attached screen shot. It went by so fast that most did not notice the sonar fish on the table.
Andrew
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I’m glad that they only gave the wackadoodle conspiracy theories about 3 seconds of time, with Ballard saying “you can throw them out”. That helps shut the door on those silly theories.
And yet Ballard now talks about searching around Howland.
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And yet Ballard now talks about searching around Howland.
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NOAA is funding Nautilus for deep water mapping around Howland, both this year and again in 2021. This year they were using the side scan off the ROV, which was good down to about 4000 meters, but in 2021 he'll be using a pack of AUVs to map the deeper water.
So, if someone was already paying him to go map around Howland, its easy to say he'll do some searching in case the image of a L-10E shows up. Otherwise, I don't think he'd be going there.
Personally, based upon my interactions with him this past trip, I think he's hooked on the Nikumaroro hypothesis.
Andrew
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I agree he's not really considering a serious search around Howland. He has to know Niku is where she ended up. But comments like "Dr. Ballard and Ms. Fundis plan to make time to explore the alternate theory favored by some skeptics of the Nikumaroro hypothesis: that Earhart crashed at sea closer to Howland." suggest they take crashed and sank seriously. That's disingenuous.