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China State News: Ship Detects Pulse Signal; Chinese Plane Spots Floating Objects; Time Line of MH-370 Mystery; Difficulty in Mapping Floor of Indian Ocean; Search for MH-370 Will Continues at Daylight

Aired April 05, 2014 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Fredricka Whitfield.

We're following breaking news today, in what could be a major break in the search for missing Flight 370. China's state news agency reports that a Chinese patrol ship detected a pulse signal with the same frequency as a black box in the southern Indian Ocean.

The signal reportedly lasted for about a minute and 30 seconds today and according to a Chinese newspaper, the ship also heard the signal on Friday, but the signal stopped too abruptly to be recorded.

Today, the Joint Agency Coordination Center's chief said that he had been notified about the signal, but there's no confirmation yet that it is connected to the missing plane. Officials also say a Chinese air force plane spotted several floating white objects earlier today. It's not clear yet if those are connected to the plane either.

And now, the task is finding out if any of these new, potential clues are indeed linked to the plane's disappearance. We have our teams around the world digging into every angle. Will Ripley is live for us in Perth, Australia, and Rene Marsh live in Washington, D.C.

So, Will, let me begin with you. What's the latest on the search efforts, trying to confirm these reported sightings and detections?

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, yes. Three a.m. here in Perth and we know that search effort, the aerial search effort, will be ramping up here at Pearce Air Base with planes taking off, heading out into these search zones. But the question is, what we don't know yet. Will the planes be going to this new area, the area outside of the designated search zone where this Chinese ship supposedly detected some sort of a ping?

Big question, we don't really know why they were looking in this particular place. That's one question they we're hoping to get answered from the Chinese officials in Beijing. But the problem is, the information stream has been slow. According to a source of ours in the Australian defense force, the Australian command center got word that there was a possible ping detected. They got word around lunchtime on Saturday. By the early evening on Saturday, when the Chinese state news agency put out a news bulletin to the world, it took the Australian officials by surprise, because they had been trying to get more information, information they just weren't able to get. We know from our source at the Australian command center, they were trying to establish a link with this Chinese ship, to see if they could get some more specific details about this supposed ping, but still, now hours later, they haven't been able to establish a link. All the information is having to go through Beijing and the information from Beijing has been limited at best.

Now, we have reached out to the Chinese government to try to get a response, and so far we haven't heard back either, Fred.

WHITFIELD: Hmm. And so, will, what about the sequence of events? I mean, we're only hours away now from daybreak. Do you know anything about the plan is in terms of what planes will get in the air? Whether ships will be redirected? Are authorities giving you kind of any indication?

RIPLEY: In a statement from Angus Houston, who's overseeing the joint coordinated effort here, he says that the Royal Australian Air Force is on standby to possibly be deployed over this new area where this ping was possibly detected. But no definitive answers as to when or if it will actually happen. That was as of the last update.

When we get another update, perhaps a decision will have been made, but this is the decision we have right now and we haven't heard anything about ships being re-routed just yet. We just don't have those answers, and I suspect it's because we just don't have all of the details we need to get from the Chinese government about the specifics on this.

WHITFIELD: All right. Will Ripley, thank you so much.

So, Rene Marsh in Washington, this Chinese claim raising a lot of key questions. For one, could this really be an indicator of the black box?

RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Right.

So, Fred, like you said, along with the developments come a lot of these key questions. So could it be? Well, the manufacturer of the pingers today did tell us that this frequency is so very unique. There's not many things that this could be, but now, behind that is this Chinese television reporting that the signal was detected every second for one and a half seconds. Now, that's the part that kind of makes us scratch our heads a bit, because the manufacturer says if these pingers are working, they're constantly pinging.

Possible explanation for why this sound was only detected for that short period of time? Well, perhaps the ship was moving away, or it could also be that the signal was disrupted by silt or debris. Also, there are two beacons. One is attached to the cockpit voice recorder, the other attached to the data recorder. However, we're only hearing a report of one ping. We know that the two beacons ping independently and not at the same time. It could be that only one pinger is working. Or both are working but one is many miles away.

All of that said, also, Fred, it's possible that this is a false positive. We heard one expert saying, Gallo, saying earlier today that Air France 447, their equipment had a false positive. We know that HMS Echo, the British ship, this week they also reported a false positive. So, to go back to your original question, could this really be the black boxes? It's really hard to say at this point, Fred.

WHITFIELD: Hmm. And so, since debris also was reportedly spotted by perhaps a Chinese air ship, should that make searchers more confident that this could be Flight 370?

MARSH: Well, we know that the debris was spotted roughly 55 miles away from where this sound was detected. It was described as white objects, but when you think about this, this debris was spotted in an area where potentially this sound was heard. Or very close to it. We're looking at it there. It doesn't necessarily make us more confident that the pinging is coming from the plane or this is even debris from the plane, because when you think about it, the black box usually that's going to be one of the heavier items that will sink down to the ground right away.

So that's usually going to be around the vicinity of perhaps where this plane went down. If that is the case, you would think with all the wave action that we've been talking about and the erratic currents, that the debris from the plane wouldn't necessarily be in that area one month later. So -- is it debris from the plane or is it just more junk? It's kind of hard to say, because, you know, with all the wave action we've been talking about that one is hard to believe.

(CROSSTALK)

WHITFIELD: Go ahead.

MARSH: Well, I know we have this map here, and I think we have it ready. The Inmarsat data, we were able to draw that arc in the southern part of the south Indian Ocean where the plane may have been. It is interesting to see where that arc is in relation to where this new area is, where they detected the sound, and it's pretty close. We may not have it ready yet, but when you look at how close it is, that is pretty interesting to see, Fred.

WHITFIELD: And now what could potentially happen next?

MARSH: Well, let's just say this is it. This is the moment that they've, all of these search crews have been waiting for, detecting this ping from the black boxes. What they would need to do is locate that pinging sound again. Once they locate the pinging sound, they'd go ahead and deploy ocean mapping equipment to actually find the black box. That's what would be next.

I'm not really sure what kind of equipment is onboard the Chinese ship, but we do know that the Australian ship, the Ocean Shield has that sort of underwater robot, able to go down on the ocean floor and actually find that black box -- Fred.

WHITFIELD: Hmm. OK. All right. Rene, thank you so much. So many questions still surrounding this latest reported sighting.

Well, let's get to our panel now to talk more about this.

Rob McCallum, CNN analyst and ocean search specialist and vice president at Williamson and Associates; CNN aviation analyst and 777 captain, Les Abend; Richard Quest is CNN aviation correspondent; and CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo, she's also a former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation and now an aviation attorney who represents families suing airlines in crashes and disasters.

OK. So, Richard, to you first.

The optimist wants to know what would happen next, if, indeed, this pulse is an indicator that the black box, one of easy that two black boxes, is nearby, but still there has to be verification whether that pulse really did happen. Australian authorities are at least acknowledging that they have this information, that they've learned of characteristics that seem to be -- seem to identify with a pulse, but still, no real confirmation. We're a couple of hours away from daybreak.

What do you expect the Australian authorities can do, ought to do, would do at this juncture, in terms of a commitment?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: There's no doubt what they'll do. They will look at what they've got. They will get as much information as is possible from the Chinese, and they will make a very quick judgment whether or not it is worth retasking the assets, the ships, the planes, to go and have a look.

Now, sure, you can send the planes over to see those white pieces of debris, and to see if there's any debris where the ship said it heard the pinging noise, and that's relatively straightforward. If I was a guessing man, I would say that's almost a certainty tomorrow, unless the Chinese say otherwise.

And then they will start thinking of moving more shippers into the area. They will see how far Ocean Shield is, have Ocean Shield get there in a reasonable time. What about the British submarine, Tireless, can that get there to start?

But they won't do any of that until it is believed that there is a reason to do it. And so far, one second pings for a minute and a half on a Friday and a Saturday, when they haven't seen the data, probably is causing them to scratch their heads and think, let's wait and see.

WHITFIELD: And, Rob, do you see that there might be any movement before there would be some real confirmation or verification, just for the sake of time? ROB MCCALLUM, CNN ANALYST: No, I don't. You know, I think Richard's absolutely correct. That, you know, this is very sketchy information at this stage. It's unconfirmed. It doesn't actually ring true in terms of the technical side of things.

WHITFIELD: What do you mean?

MCCALLUM: Well, it's -- it's a one and a half second or a one and a half minute recording. You know, the frequency that the pingers operate on is being selected because that's the quiet zone in the spectrum of ocean noise, and so, it's not only aircraft pingers that operate on this frequency. All manner of science equipment, fishing equipment, survey equipment, operates on this frequency.

So, was it just a short blip from the pingers? Or was it somebody that was firing up a little bit of equipment, or testing, ranging some equipment, and that was picked up by mistake. As we've heard, there's been a couple of instances already of false positives. So we need more information in order to verify before we act.

WHITFIELD: So, Mary, wouldn't it seem that a lot of time has been lost by not moving assets, even while they try to get confirmation or verification? Because if initial reports are that somewhere between 10 and 12 hours prior to, you know, this juncture, discussing it, I guess Chinese authorities made everyone aware of it, Australian authorities learned of it, 10 or 12 hours lost now.

Why wouldn't they just move the assets as they tried to get verification?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, right, what you said is right. Plus, now, we learned that they had actually heard it the day before, too, so now we have a day and a half potentially almost two days that were lost, and I think what they will do -- I mean, Richard's probably right, but I think what they will do is try to get confirmation from the Chinese ship. They've been trying to reach them. They haven't been able to reach them, but once they reach them and say, look, did you hear this on Friday and Saturday?

And I think they will send assets. I don't think they have a choice, because as they said, they were using educated hypotheses to search as it was. I don't like to use the term "guess," but this is as good as what they've had so far. So I do think that they will send the ships and I think they have to, because, you know, a ping repeated on two different days is about the best they have so far. So I think they'll go.

WHITFIELD: And, Les?

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Yes. I mean, this is conjecture on my part, but just to expand on what Mary and Richard were saying, I would think they would go back, confirm some of the data that's been computed and assumptions made, and just make sure, like you mentioned earlier, that arc that will bring up at some point in time indeed may possibly intersect where that impact area could have been.

WHITFIELD: All right. Les, Rob, Richard and Mary, thank you so much.

Stick around. We do have much more to come as it pertains to these two reports. Chinese news agencies saying that they have a reason to believe that black boxes or at least debris may be in the general vicinity. Still awaiting confirmation from Australian authorities.

And we're now only a few hours away from a new search day in the Indian Ocean. We'll have much more of that straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: All right. Welcome back.

Here's the latest on the search for Flight 370.

We're waiting to find out more information about that pulse signal reportedly picked up by Chinese patrol ship. So far, no confirmation that it has anything to do with the missing plane.

CNN analyst David Gallo joins me now by phone from Boston. He's the director of special projects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

All right. So, David, are you optimistic about this report?

DAVID GALLO, CNN ANALYST (via telephone): Hi, Fred.

Well, I'm as optimistic as can be, given the circumstances. You know, it's a sit and wait until we hear more, but it sounds right. So then I'll you know, we're going to be more or less on pins and needles.

WHITFIELD: So, what sounds right about it, to you? That in this -- this pulse was heard for about a minute and a half, and that apparently it has a pulse signal of 37.5 kilohertz, what is -- what's encouraging to you about this information?

GALLO: Yes. Well, that's encouraging, because that's the secret number for the frequency for the black box pingers, and the rep rate was about right, meaning it makes that noise about every second. The idea it was only heard a short bit, I kind of get that the water depth of that area goes from shallower than 2,000 meters, which is, you know, less than a mile and a half, to greater than 5,000 meters which is about three miles. Depending on where it is inside there, I could see that the signal could come and go, depending where they are with the boat.

So there's nothing, you know, that's like out of place. It's just waiting to make sure that that's really what was heard yesterday, or today.

WHITFIELD: So, is it your feeling, there are a lot of potential obstructions down below, that if indeed this was the pulse, that there are any number of things that could cut off that signal after about a minute and a half?

GALLO: Yes, absolutely. I mean, to me, it just reminds of me trying to get a station on a radio, when you're dialing and for a while, in a car, you're driving along. You got the station. Now, it sounds great. You go another 50 feet and it fades out, then comes back again. If you keep trying to fiddle with the tuning knob, trying to get that big one just right.

So, there's a lot of stuff. There's thermal, there's thermal layers in the water. There's water that's denser and saucier, there's mountains, there's valleys, there's all of that stuff can do that to sound.

WHITFIELD: So if the Australian navy's Open Shield, or perhaps even the British ship Echo which all have that sophisticated listening equipment onboard, if it were to be directed in that same general vicinity where the Chinese ship was, what would it take for them to try and locate that sound? Is it as simple as some sophisticated mapping of the Chinese ship, that had may have done? Dropping of an anchor where they would have heard that site? How do they get others to duplicate that path?

GALLO: That's a great idea -- a great question. You know, it really matters how the Chinese located -- we're giving a very general location, 101 degrees west, 25 degrees south, something like that. And you know, I don't know if they dropped a, if they got that through GPS.

It's one thing to know where the surface ship is nap they were towing some sort of listening device, you've got to know where that is and that could easily be a mile or more away from the surface ship. So, it all depends on how well they know the position and where they were when they heard the sound, and then you've got to move these other assets in if that's what's going to happen to that location and start listening and eventually looking.

WHITFIELD: So if not by way of other assets in that general vicinity, how else would this Chinese ship try to verify what they heard? I mean, how do they convince Australian authorities or anybody else that we are very much convinced that what we heard is a pulse from a black box?

GALLO: Sure. One thing they can do is I'm sure, at least I hope, that they recorded what they heard previously. So, they can start by handing that over, so other people can analyze it and have a look at it. The second part is going to be up to the joint command in Australia right now and I'm assuming they're playing under those guidelines. So, I think there's probably a mechanism set up where if you see something, hear something, how you then pass it up the system.

It doesn't seem to be what happened so far. It seemed like it came out of the media first. The Chinese media when we first heard about this.

So, we'll have to sit back and watch how it's handled from here on in.

WHITFIELD: All right. David Gallo, thank you so much. Appreciate it. All right. We'll have much more on these reported sightings and audible hearing coming from this Chinese ship, as well as the Chinese plane that says it saw white debris not far from the location of that post. We'll have much more on that. And we also have reaction from many of the relatives of the passengers on Flight 370.

Many of them expressing skepticism.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: All right. News that a Chinese ship may have heard several pings in the Indian Ocean is drawing reaction from relatives of passengers on Flight 370.

Our Joe Johns joins us now from Kuala Lumpur.

So, Joe, I know this news came in the middle of the night for some folks but what kind of reaction are you getting?

JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You're absolutely right. Just after 3:00 a.m. right here in Kuala Lumpur, Fred.

Very little reaction, frankly, from the families of the passengers. They've been through it before. A ray of hope searchers may have found something. So far, all of the other hopeful signs have faded away after time. The sparse amount of reaction we've gotten is from people who say they frankly do not know what to think at this stage.

A Chinese family member here said to CNN, there is no confirmation, he said, and we are all simply waiting patiently. Now, the government, which, by the way, held a briefing a couple hours before the news came out, this new news, they issued a statement actually on Twitter suggesting now is the time to pray and hope.

But honestly, this is only the beginning and we are still looking for the first confirmation of anything. It's clear, Fred, the authorities are treating this with a great deal of caution.

WHITFIELD: And, Joe, you know, I understand it's very late there, but I wonder if Malaysian authorities, if anyone has expressed their disappointment that the Chinese, you know, didn't report this information to them directly, so that they could, then, involve the Australian authorities? Because apparently, that's usually how the sequence of events would go, but instead the Chinese handled it on their own and publicized it on its own through its government news agencies?

JOHNS: Right. Well, I have to tell you, there is some question about the timeline there, and whether there was a little bit of conversation below the table about the fact that these potential pings had been located, but wasn't disseminated to the news media. There was that briefing that happened a couple hours before this news came out, we know the first alert had come much earlier in the day. So, it's simply possible that the authorities had some hint of this, but didn't tell it out of an abundance of caution. We'd like to get to them and ask. WHITFIELD: All right. Lots of confusion still. Thank you so much, Joe Johns. Appreciate that from Kuala Lumpur.

Of course, we have lots more questions and panel coming up as well to address some of the questions that might be on your mind as well. How will Chinese authorities cooperate with Malaysian authorities and Australian authorities, now that you do have a multi-national task force at hand? All that straight ahead, right after this.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SARAH RAMIREZ, CNN HERO OF THE WEEK: Pixley is a small community located in the central part of California. We are in this agriculturally rich area and yet people who live here and work here are hungry, are impoverished.

Some are working in the fields that feed the entire country and then they don't have resources to put them in their homes. It's heartbreaking.

You can't just watch that and not wonder, is there something more that we can do?

What we do is we glean mostly from backyards. Today, we're looking at a glean of about 6,400 pounds. That's incredible.

My husband and I grew up in Pixley. My parents, they worked in the fields. I had family members who died at very young ages due to chronic diseases, like diabetes.

For those had you that are high school students -

Looking at these issues of poverty and obesity, we were trying to figure out how do we provide our resources for our community and our home?

We also have a component in our garden that's a "you pick" area, if your household needs some fruits and vegetables. We really try to teach how to use what we are growing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Peach and cucumber, wow.

RAMIREZ: I want to grow old and I want to grow old in a healthy way. And I want that for everybody.

Oh, look.

UNIDENTIFIED GIRL: Oh, thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: All right. It's been a full day of new suspicions that could potentially turn out to be big developments in the search for flight 370. China's state news agency said earlier today a Chinese ship detected a pulse, a pulse signal with the same frequency as a black box would have, and it lasted about 90 seconds, but there's still no confirmation that it has anything to do with this missing plane. A Chinese air force search plane also reportedly spotted some white objects floating 56 miles from where that pulse was detected.

CNN International's Jim Chancy has been reporting from Kuala Lumpur from day one, and he has a time line of the twists and turns of this worldwide mystery.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIM CLANCY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The story of flight 370 began at the arrival gate at Beijing where it was listed as delayed some six hours after it disappeared over the South China Sea.

UNIDENTIFIED CNN ANCHOR: We have breaking news right now. Malaysia Airlines has confirmed that it has lost contact with the plane carrying 287 passengers and 12 crew members. Flight MH-370 was heading to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. It was a Boeing 777 200. It was expected to land at 6:30 local time, but it is almost 9:00 in Beijing time, which means that the plane is over 2.5 hours late.

CLANCY: The confusion, concern and fear at that hour completely predictable. Everyone dreaded the worst, a terrible accident.

AHMAD JAUHARI YAHYA, CEO, MALAYSIA AIRLINES: We have confirmed that this flight, MH-370, lost contact with air traffic control at 2:40 a.m. this morning.

JAMES CHIN, PROFESSOR OF PHYSICAL SCIENCES: Most people initially thought that it was a straight forward crash, and that it would come down somewhere south of Vietnam, and the wreckage would be found very, very quickly, and so a lot of people took a hand's-off approach.

CLANCY: Malaysia waited to reveal details of its own radar that the plane had deliberately reversed course, flying back over the Malay Peninsula on a heading towards the Indian Ocean.

(on camera): How much of a turn back, 20 kilometers, 10?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are still looking at that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are still looking at that.

CLANCY (voice-over): Suddenly, anything was possible. Wild and intricate Internet theories fed fears of an elaborate terror plot led by two young Iranian terrorists who boarded with stolen passports. The only problem, they weren't terrorists. Just trying to begin new lives in Europe.

Suspicion soon shifted to the only people capable of flying the Boeing 777, the pilots. Captain Zaharie Shah, some suspected, had practiced the stealthy turns and changes in altitude on his home flight simulator. But analysis by the FBI of the simulator's data turned up nothing. No claim of responsibility, and no known ties to terrorism groups among passengers or crews, and no motive supported by evidence. Intricate analysis of satellite handshakes took the search to an area where it likely ran out of fuel. With the plane, all evidence of what really happened on its flight data recorders.

TONY ABBOTT, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: We cannot be certain about the ultimate success of what happened to the MH-370, but we can be certain that we will spare no effort, that we will not rest until we have done everything that we humanly can.

CLANCY (on camera): Who steered the plane off course and why? What happened inside the cockpit? When did the aircraft go down? And when will we find a trace? There is an abundance of theories colliding with an absence of evidence. After four weeks here, like everyone else, I only have questions and no answers.

Jim Clancy, CNN, Kuala Lumpur.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: Let's bring back our panel, Rob McCallum, Les Abend and Mary Schiavo.

Good to see you all again.

Rob, you first.

It is unchartered territory. So does it appear as though these were unavoidable mistakes that have elicited a lot of questions, or is this simply this is what comes with the territory of a calamity of this scale?

ROB MCCALLUM, OCEAN SEARCH SPECIALIST: Oh, I think this is what comes with the territory. I mean, this is unprecedented by any measure, and so there's no playbook. There's no -- there's never been something that somebody else can refer to in terms of experience, or lessons learned from past events. So it's caught everybody off guard.

WHITFIELD: I wonder, Mary, if there's anything at this juncture that the Chinese authorities can do to really kind of cement their argument that -- of what was reported today by the Chinese news agency, that indeed its ship heard this pulse, and that, indeed, one of its aircraft spotted debris. What can they say at this juncture to kind of cement that argument to show that what it saw and witnessed is true?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Right. Well, first off they need to start by telling the Australian Joint Task Force why they were looking in that particular area. They must have some indication, some clue. You know, it's good to be lucky, but, you know, I can't believe they just picked that site by luck. So they need to give them their reasoning, their evidence, their coordinates and data to explain why they were looking in that area.

And, two, respond to the joint task force, which has been trying to reach the ship, and say, this is what we found, these are the exact coordinates where we found it and this is what we've heard. I understand they couldn't record it on one of the days. It was too short of a pinging noise. But they need to come forward with what they have so that the joint task force can support them. But why they were there is a real mystery.

WHITFIELD: I wonder, Les, if that could be expected, that they would come forward to share what they have, given they didn't share at the very beginning. Instead, they reported it but didn't necessarily share it with other authorities investigating this missing aircraft.

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, therein lies, or begs the question. Why? And maybe they were actually -- we may be privy to the information, but maybe they were assigned of being in that particular area.

Listen, we all know this whole investigation had its pitfalls and this thing was an overwhelming situation. It is unprecedented. And an accident of any measure is unprecedented and overwhelming. And had they asked for expertise outside of the Malaysian government, maybe this would have proceeded a little quicker.

WHITFIELD: And I wonder, Rob, not even they realized it would be as complicated a search as it turned out to be. And Malaysian authorities thought they would be able to handle it, not knowing how -- how large of a scale this search would be.

MCCALLUM: I mean, no one could have predicted this, because it's unprecedented. I mean, you know, to take an airliner so far off course in what appears to be a premeditated way, to a place which is one of the most remote spots on the surface of the ocean, I mean, how do you -- how do you prepare for that? So we'll only know once those black boxes are recovered. And perhaps some significant pieces of wreckage can be analyzed.

WHITFIELD: Mary, do you have an opinion as to whether this plane, any wreckage, could ever be located, if this pulse is never to be redetected again? If there's no debris in which to, you know, uncover or collect? And there's no way a full-scale survey of the entire Indian Ocean can take place. Is it your feeling that, after this weekend, it will be happenstance that any wreckage would ever be located?

SCHIAVO: Well, most likely. But for these, this location where these two sets of pings were heard, Friday and Saturday, even if the pings should stop, you know, if the batteries are dying, and they're about to die out, we do have the coordinates. They have the latitude and longitude of where this was. And I think, at this point, giving these soundings, given that they have this information, they can deploy the "Ocean Shield." They can use side-scale SONAR. They can use other methods. And they will certainly map the ocean floor, at least in this area.

So they have this to go on. If these pings turn out to be nothing -- and I imagine that the search will go on another 10 or 15 days because the batteries theoretically could last that long. It's not that they automatically stop at 30 days. But after that point, there will have to be some regrouping, maybe further refinement of the satellite data, and maybe they hope just to get lucky. That's sometimes the best you can hope for if all of your other leads have dried up. But they aren't in any way, shape or form ready to pack up and go home yet. I think it will go on for another fair amount of time.

WHITFIELD: At least a couple more weeks, in your view?

All right, Mary --

SCHIAVO: Oh, yes.

WHITFIELD: -- Les and Rob, appreciate that.

When we come back, Chad Myers will help us understand the difficulty in mapping the floor of the Indian Ocean, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: Welcome back. Four weeks into the search for flight 370 and another report of floating debris in the Southern Indian Ocean, and China's state news agency is reporting a ship detected a possible pulse signal with the same frequency as a black box.

But as CNN's Chad Myers explains, the Indian Ocean is such a remote area, that there's no easy map to follow.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: You know, many people have asked, how could we not have the entire ocean mapped? Let me give you a little sublime idea of how difficult that would be. We have a ship. It's pinging. It's seeing the beam width down at the bottom of the ocean, about five miles wide. The ship is moving five miles per hour mapping a big, long stripe. Think about a lawn mower going in one direction. Turn around and go the other direction, back and forth and back and forth. The earth's ocean is 130 million square miles. You can only do 25 square miles an hour. I did the math. If you never go for fuel, you never get new crew members, it would take one ship 593 years to map the ocean. A little bit sublime when you think how much potential is here at 130 million miles. So much of the ocean floor to map.

So what do we know about this area? Up in here, where the search area is, now, every line you see is about a five-mile width strip that some ship has either gone that way and mapped and that way and mapped and that way and mapped. But look at all the blue areas that have nothing. Not one ship has ever gone through those areas right through there. We'll compare that to the United States, and thanks to NOAA and a lot of shipping around our area, the entire east coast completely mapped, up and down, the west coast completely mapped. You get farther out, obviously, more sparse, but still, we have a much better idea of our area here than, of course, that Indian Ocean, which is so remote.

WHITFIELD: A very complex region.

Thank you so much, Chad Myers. Appreciate that. When we come back, we'll have our expert panel with us. What happens tomorrow, in just a matter of hours, when the search resumes at daylight?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For Schuyler Ebersol, high school started pretty normally, but his luck quickly took a turn for the worse.

SCHUYLER EBERSOL, LIME DISEASE PATIENT & AUTHOR: I would have sometimes difficulty breathing. I'd have severe dizziness so that I couldn't really walk or see straight for days at a time. I would faint randomly and I would go to sleep some nights and not sure if I'd wake up in the morning.

GUPTA: At first, he chocked it up to stress but then realized something was really wrong.

EBERSOL: No one knew what was wrong with me. And there were all sorts of hypotheses.

GUPTA: Home from school for months at a time, away from his friends and world and very sick, Ebersol desperately needed an escape, and he found it, in writing.

EBERSOL: I just started writing, and I would get lost in this world, and I identified with this character. It was a way to keep me going while everything else in my life wasn't so great.

GUPTA: Then, after several months, doctors finally discovered the cause of his symptoms, a rare form of Lyme disease. At the same time, his scattered pages started to jell into a book.

EBERSOL: The book is called "The Hidden World." It's about a main character who has a heart attack. He slips into a coma, and when he wakes up, he turns into a wolf in the hospital room.

GUPTA: Sound familiar?

EBERSOL: I didn't really intend for there to be a lot of me in the main character, Nate Williams, but it sort of happened that way.

GUPTA: "The Hidden World" was published last December, with more in the works. And Ebersol said, through it all, writing saved his life.

EBERSOL: You really just have to find something that can sustain you and keep you mentally strong. For me, it was writing and then the quest to get published.

GUPTA: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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WHITFIELD: Welcome back. The search for flight 370 begins again in just a few hours.

Our panel is back with us, Rob McCallum, Les Abend, and Mary Schiavo.

So to all of you, with daylight in just a matter of hours there off the Australian coast -- Mary, to you first -- what should happen next in this search especially given today's reports from the Chinese news agency of a pulse or even sightings?

SCHIAVO: Well, I think the Chinese ship that found the pulses on two different days needs to get right back to the location where they found it and try to replicate that. But in the meantime, communicate with the joint task force and provide them the information they need to know, as the task force has indicated that they've been trying to reach the ship, and get coordinated with them so they can, first, hopefully, replicate the signal and then, second, get the rest of the support they need out there to confirm it and get the "Ocean Shield" headed there if the signals can be confirmed. And then from then on out, coordinate.

WHITFIELD: And, Rob, what do you want to see happen in a matter of hours?

MCCALLUM: I think Mary is quite correct. We nee d-- I heard it presumably twice -- they're saying twice. We need to hear it again. So I'm hoping that the ship that heard it is running patterns to try and go back over that site again. But it may also be time to launch SONAR buoys, to bracket the area to see if we can hear anything further. And it's a question of -- if this is the pinger, this is pay dirt. This is the jackpot.

WHITFIELD: And, Les?

ABEND: What I'd like to see is, in this day and age, of tremendous communication among everybody, that this communication is provided through the Chinese government directly to the task force.

WHITFIELD: All right. Les, Mary, Rob, thanks to all of you. Appreciate it.

We'll be back with more of this mystery surrounding Malaysian 370.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: The countdown is on. The final four of men's college basketball kicks off in just a matter of hours. We'll find out tonight. The action gets started at 6:09 eastern on TBS with Florida and UConn. That game is followed by Kentucky taking on Wisconsin. Both games airing on CNN's sister network at TBS.

And the NEWSROOM continues right after this.

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