Sea creatures, according to scientists, could lead investigators to the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which went missing in March 2014, becoming one of Malaysia’s deadliest aviation catastrophes. In the still-unsolved aviation mystery, all 239 individuals on board were thought dead.
Aside from a few pieces of debris that washed up on an Indian Ocean island, authorities found no sign of the wreck.
The plane was carrying 227 passengers and 12 staff members on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
The government search for the missing jet was called off in January 2017, and a private six-month search a year later yielded no results.
According to a recent study, barnacles discovered on a piece of plane debris may hold the key to determining what happened to MH370.
What are barnacles?
Barnacles are arthropods related to crabs and lobsters that belong to the subclass Cirripedia of the subphylum Crustacea.
According to research published in AGU Advances, MH370 may have drifted “far south” of where prior models have indicated. The barnacles were located on a flaperon, which is the moving portion of a wing. It’s thought to be from the missing plane.
The plane’s components washed ashore on the French island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean a year after it vanished.
The chemistry of the barnacle’s shells changes every day as the water temperature changes. Using this information, the crustacean’s position on any given day can be determined.
As quoted by media outlets, Dr. Gregor Herbert, Associate Professor from the University of South Florida, said: “The [debris] was covered in barnacles, and as soon as I saw that, I immediately began sending emails to the search investigators because I knew the geochemistry of their shells could provide clues to the crash location.”
“Sadly, the largest and oldest barnacles have not yet been made available for research, but with this study, we’ve proven this method can be applied to a barnacle that colonized the debris shortly after the crash to reconstruct a complete drift path back to the crash origin,” he said.
Dr. Herbert added: “No one can do any work on the larger barnacles until the French change their minds, but our publication lays a clear pathway for what needs to be done and why it should work.”
Nassar Al-Qattan, a recent USF geochemistry doctoral graduate who helped analyze the geochemistry of the barnacles, said: “Knowing the tragic story behind the mystery motivated everyone involved in this project to get the data and have this work published.”
What happened to Flight MH370?
Nobody knows what happened, and there are numerous conspiracy theories.
On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia, bound for Beijing Capital International Airport in China.
When the flight was over the South China Sea, the crew last interacted with air traffic control (ATC) about 38 minutes after departure.
The aircraft then vanished from ATC radar screens, but it was followed by military radar for another hour. The plane was discovered veering westward from its planned flight path.