One thing is for sure: Since the Ocean Shield reached the area roughly 1,000 miles northwest of Perth, the search took a much more productive turn. After weeks of false reports of floating wreckage spotted by satellites, suddenly all talk of chasing floating wreckage ended, and attention moved to the Ocean Shield and its ping detector, which moves through the ocean a mile beneath the ship.
Although the Ocean Shield belongs to the Royal Australian Navy, it’s crewed by civilian specialists. It only went into service in the summer of 2012. It was built in Norway and is classed as an offshore support vessel. The Australians intended to use it as part of a disaster relief task force but it turned out to be ideally suited to the challenge of finding Flight MH370: it has a massive 60-ton crane that would be able to raise wreckage from the water and was able to deploy both the ping detector and the Bluefin 21 robot submersible that would be the first device launched if the location of the flight data recorder was confirmed.
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