Page 21 - Ocean Shield News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

We can bring you special coverage for the search for flight 370. right now we're getting new information about the enormous cost of this search. brian todd is here in "the situation room" working his sources. >> wolf, reporting new information tonight on the costs of this phase of the particular operation here. getting this from sources close to the operation. we're told this particular bluefin-21 which had the two glitches in its first two missions this week cost $3.5 million. it was manufactured by bluefin robotics, purchased by phoenix international. phoenix has nine operators onboard the o...

Missions cut short twice now. dive number one because the depth of the water was too much for the equipment and its programming so it aborpted the mission automatically. on wednesday morn, glitch number two. we don't know the nature of the technical glitch. we haven't gotten an answer. we know the bluefin had to come back up. they took what data was on there, didn't find anything. as far as we know right now, the bluefin-21 is operating normally and perhaps number three will be a charm here to be able to actually complete a full mission. >> right now, that bluefin-21 is under water and they're...

To perform well, don. >> you know, michael given the limitations of working with the bluefin, why can't they put more than one robosub down there? >> reporter: it is a fair question, don, i think the answer is there is not that many of these things around. obviously, a highly technical piece of equipment. and there are others around the world. but they're all in use at the moment. they're in great demand for oil and gas research, if you like on the bottom of the ocean. and so they're all at work at the moment. this was the only one that was available. you know, they have their eyes out for oth...

Bureau. i know there's one onboard the ocean shield, for instance. so there are personnel out there with crash investigation experience. so hopefully we will know something to confirm yes or no later on today. >> have you heard anything, geoffrey, about the cell phone from the co-pilot that apparently was trying to make a connection with a cell tower in penang in malaysia after it made that turn after the transponder went dead? it's raising all sorts of suspicions. what, if anything, have you heard about it? >> it's a very interesting comment, wolf, because some of those suspicions, of course,...

Anderson? >> the fuel recovered from the search, is it related to the plane? have they been able to determine that yet? >> not yet, no. we have to remember, that search area is about 2,000 kilometers off the coast of western australia. they did pick up the two liters of oil they found floating out there near where the ocean shield is. they bottled that. what they have to do is get a ship out there and then helicopter it to that ship. the ship can get it closer in and then the helicopter will take off again to get it here to perth. they said it would take two or three days. in a day or so, we w...