Page 33 - Deep Ocean News Today

Slick was found in the search area, but it will take several days to figure out where that oil came from. cnns will ripley has more on this new phase. hes in perth, australia. >> reporter: carol, things are really slowing down here in perth as you mentioned. the search chief says the bluefin 21 is now scanning the ocean floor in an area so remote it is brand new to man. the search for 370 is moving into a dark corner of the world that in some ways is more mysterious than outer space. >> we know ...

Im wolf blitzer. youre in "the situation room." were following multiple, critical new developments in the search for flight 370, now missing for five weeks. among the latest developments, searchers are searching the ocean with the bluefin-21. with daylight breaking in the area, the air search is about to resume. also, cnn has now learned that the first officers cell phone was on around the time the plane vanished. experts call that unusual. the phone was detected searching for a service by a m...

Its not listening at all. its mapping by sending sonic signals and recording what comes back in an elaborate and fancy way. it goes about two and a half miles down and back and forth in a long, slow process and downloads all that data. when it works properly, when you get hit in the right position, it produces remarkable images of what the ocean looks like in that area. >> this is the thing thats so interesting that weve been hearing from the very beginning of the search that this is an inaccess...

Good state, to be decrypted, we have to understand what the data means. >> reporter: the cockpit voice recorder unveils the pilots last words. the copilot tells the captain to land at a nearby airport. his response? too late. the black boxes also reveal a catastrophic fire in one engine and a loss of power in another. air france flight 447 caught in a powerful storm and rolling to the right. it is june 2009, a flight from rio to paris. 228 people on board. the plane begins to fall 10,000 feet pe...

They may be able to extend that. 4.5 thousand meters is the middle of the world that we typically operate. our average depth is anywhere between 4,000 and 6,000 meters so down to 20,000 feet. >> many thanks. >> thank you. still to come in the newsroom, imagine searching for a laptop computer in a place the size of manhattan. now imagine doing it in total darkness. thats the kind of challenge search crews are up against as they scour the deep sea for that plane. well talk more about that when i...

24-hour deployment. at that rate, it could take six to eight weeks to scan the area from which the pings could have emanated. we have more on the conditions so far beneath the surface. >> the search for mh-370 is moving into a dark corner of the world that in some ways is more mysterious than outer space. >> we know less about our deep ocean than we know of the moons surface. >> reporter: this man and his research team took this video in the southern indian ocean. the professor of coastal oceano...

And then youve got to send a camera down and then youve got to start going down there and recover the wreckage. at those depths, its a really difficult job. >> how much of a problem is the silt on the floor of the ocean? >> well, you know, it could be a problem or it could be good. its a problem if the debris and wreckage has sunk into the silt and covered it up. but on the other hand, ive been a geologist for a while and if you find disturbance in the silt, thats something that you could find o...

Sort of data? >> reporter: what happens is a full mission takes about 24 hours, two hours down, it scans the bottom of the ocean using the side scan sonar and two hours to get back up. while that is happening, everybody on the ship is basically sitting and waiting. theres no realtime data exchange. once the submersible comes back up on the ship, it takes about four hours to download everything. thats when they start poring over all the data. >> david, this unmanned sub is tiny, 16 feet long, 21 ...

Most of the folks that fly are still in the same belief that i am, that radar is constantly with us in some form or the other and never quite far enough away from it where we couldnt be tracked or low enough to be tracked. were just an obvious target out there. >> stand by, everyone. there we go. im don lemon. youre in the "cnn newsroom." were at the top of the airline. we have to make very critical decision and do it soon, when to turn off the ears and start looking with eyes. were talking abou...

Tell is something that you talk about all the time, which is how little we know about our own oceans. do you think that society should be devoting more energy and resources to studying deep sea topography? >> i think we need to know more about the oceans in realtime. we need to know more about what is happening in the water column that he feeds in to climate modeling and all of the other stuff. the ocean is a vast volume. you know, the land, he can see the surface of the land from orbit. you can...