MH370 plane wreckage could be found thanks to new method

The whereabouts of MH370 remains a mystery

At the time of disappearance, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 Boeing 777 took off from Kuala Lumpur airport (Malaysia) to Beijing (China), carrying 239 passengers and 12 crew members.

The research team leader, Professor Gregory Herbert of the University of South Florida (USA), came up with a new idea when looking at photos of plane debris washed ashore on the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean in 2015, one year after the ill-fated plane crashed.

“The wreckage was covered in barnacles, and as soon as I saw that image I immediately started emailing investigators because I knew the chemical properties of barnacle shells could provide clues to the location of the wreckage,” said Mr Herbert.

The shells of barnacles and similar marine animals grow day by day, forming internal layers similar to the rings of a tree. Each shell layer has a chemical composition based on the temperature of the surrounding seawater at the time the shell formed.

Barnacles cling to the first piece of debris found from MH370

In a new study published in the journal AGU Advances , Herbert's team conducted experiments on living barnacles to analyze the chemical properties of their shells, and for the first time deciphered information about the temperature of their shells.

Next, they applied the method to barnacles on debris from MH370. With the help of barnacle experts and oceanographers from the University of Galway (Ireland), they successfully reconstructed part of the drift journey of the barnacles on the debris.

"Unfortunately, we still do not have access to the largest and oldest barnacles to continue to build the trajectory of the debris, but the method is completely applicable to barnacles that attached to the debris immediately after the plane crashed into the sea to track and allow us to go back to the first location where the wreckage crashed," said expert Herbert.

The search for MH370 has so far stretched thousands of kilometers along a north-south corridor known as the “Seventh Arc” of the Indian Ocean. Because the water temperature changes rapidly along this arc, Herbert is confident his method can reveal the plane’s exact location.

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