HD ROV Footage 2012

[Jeff Victor Hayden]

May as well put any comments/observations on HD ROV footage in one place.

[Bill Mangus]

Ok, I'll go first.

Could the cable or rope or whatever it is possibly be the topside radio antenna that ran from the top of each vertical stabilizer to the mast on the fuselage.  Looking at the cable I can see where it changes diameter in at least 2 places.  Could the larger sections be the loading coils for the antennas just at the attach points to the central mast?

[richie conroy]

Doubt it's anything worth analyze in, maybe fishing line, or wire off fish trap.

It's not the same material as rope in 2010 video  :) 

[Ken Nielsen]

Just below the tail of the fish at 00:30 is something sticking out with a cord or wire attached to it. Three pieces of something curved at 00:10, although it looks too thick to be metal. Maybe just coral "flakes"? The bottle or whatever it is at 00:37 looks so distinctive that someone must be able to identify it. Thin wire again at 00:43 to the left. And of course the rectangular piece of thin metal at 00:55.

I don't think I have ever seen HD video with "3D pop" like this. Can't wait to see more and to hear the verdict of the experts.

[Martin X. Moleski, SJ]

New TIGHAR YouTube video: "Comparison SD 1."

Guess: This is what they got from Niku VI in 2010.

Edit: I guessed wrong.  :D

[Jeff Victor Hayden]

Quite a difference indeed. Sure is a debris field and of course it can't be dismissed as coral this time. Ship? looks very fragile, maybe a radio controlled boat for a duck pond? Still be hard to prove aircraft wreckage type, at this stage. ;)
IMHO of course

[Doug Giese]

The long, thin object looks organic to me (a type of kelp?).

There is also virtually no marine growth on it as one would expect on a man made object after 75 years in tropical waters. The color of the object isn't what I'd expect from an aircraft cable.

At 0:07 minutes there is a starfish in the bottom center of the image. I'm certainly no botanist, but it appears to be in the Linckia Multifora family,
which inhabits the South Pacific islands. The starfish doesn't really matter. I was trying to evaluate the color balance and relative sizes of objects in the overall image. The images in the link and Wikipedia were close to the color of the starfish in the image. So, it appears the white balance within the overall ROV capture at about 0:07 was close enough to natural to judge other colors in the image. The Linckia Multifora grows to about 6" across per the referenced link. If it's anywhere close to 6" across, the long thin object has a diameter in the 0.75" to 1.0" range. That's too thick for anything other than a heavy duty power cable on a weight sensitive aircraft.

My vote is that the long thing is a relatively new organic object.

The definition of the new ROV video is great, and the multi-colors should be a big help identifying things.

Doug

[Martin X. Moleski, SJ]

Debris Field uploaded to YouTube.

Ric's note: "This 2 minute video clip encompasses the ROV's entire pass over and past a debris field of man-made objects that may be wreckage from Amelia Earhart's aircraft. The sounds you hear are made by the thrusters that control and maneuver the ROV. "Esmerelda" sings to herself while she works.

"The features in the debris field first appear 51 seconds into the clip. A word of caution: The objects were spotted by a trained forensic imaging scientist. Most people will see nothing but coral. Others will see aircraft parts that aren't there. This is the raw footage. Many specialized techniques will be applied to learn more from this imagery."

[Bill Mangus]

Looks to me as if cable/wire/rope/marine organism seen in both the video clips is the same.  As is the rectangular piece of metal.

[Martin X. Moleski, SJ]

Looks to me as if cable/wire/rope/marine organism seen in both the video clips is the same.  As is the rectangular piece of metal.

Ah!  Maybe that is the point of selecting those two snippets.

[Ken Nielsen]

I made this crude approximation of a stereo view of the "tail wheel" artifact. However, maybe due to my age it is very difficult for me to adapt my eyes to make the images merge into 3D. The more I look at this, though, the more the "wheel" looks like a feature in the surrounding object, like a door handle. Wish I could view it stereoscopically as it might be more clear what this is or even more so, what it is not.

[Ricker H Jones]

That's a great idea, Ken.  It's just a little wide apart (same objects) for me to render it in 3-D,  too.  Normally by holding it close and focusing in the distance, I can get 3-D pretty easily.  I keep seeing a propellor across an engine on its back.  I'm wondering how it would look in 3-D and I would like to know more about the scale.
Rick J

[Jeff Victor Hayden]

There is the opportunity to get some idea of scale from the HD footage Ricker. This time around there is life, fish starfish etc... Something that was missing in 2010.
Know the species, know the maximum/average size.
Not quite as accurate as a yardstick but, better than nothing, which is what we had last time.
E.g take the estimated size given to piece of wire earlier in the thread, 0.75 to 1 inch. When you then compare that to the two species of fish in the footage you get one species at over one metre in length and the other at just under half a metre. Which isn't quite right. Either the fish are world records+++ or the wire isn't 0.75 to 1 inch. I suspect the latter.

[Greg Daspit]

The video Marty linked in post 7 is very good. Thank you for posting it Marty.

What I see that looks interesting:
From about 1:20 to 1:30 the entire section in the middle looks like it has a lot of controls and panels. The guts of a cockpit?
The structure at in the right of the last shot is interesting, almost looks like the outer skin of a cockpit or just rocks in sand. Too far away to see
An object at the the center / bottom at 1:25 could be part of the main landing gear, its right next to what looked like the main gear seen earlier in the video (the original image released). Maybe the center post of the strut.
Certainly a lot for Jeff Glickman to go thru.

[Ric Gillespie]

The only point of the SD and HD footage is to show the difference.  The long green thingy is biologic.
We're currently putting together a research bulletin for the TIGHAR website about the debris field investigation and what we've learned so far.  It should be up later today.