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Latest Information on the Search for Missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370

Aired April 12, 2014 - 20:00   ET

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

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Don Lemon. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM. It is the top of the hour.

The people searching for Malaysia airlines flight 370 have to make very critical decision and they have to do it very soon, when to turn off the ears and start looking with eyes.

We're talking about below the ocean floor, not on the surface. I'm talking about those pingers, those emergency beacons believed to be at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. If the batteries aren't dead already, they soon will be.

A high-tech imaging sonar is the next school to start running when commanders decide to stop listening for those pings. It has been four days since the sound has been heard from the deep ocean in the search areas.

So the prime minister told reporters today his confidence remains high despite the many challenges. Tony Abbott described a multinational search as a massive, massive task.

And the search planes, they're at it again. They're up in the air again departing from Perth in western Australia. Today marks day 37, 37 days since Malaysia airlines flight 370 vanished.

Live now to Perth, Australia, CNN's Michael Holmes.

Michael, the prime minister Tony Abbott says he is still confident about the search. What about the search crews, do they share that optimism?

MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, they share a determination to keep on going. I think it's fair to say, Don. Optimism about finding wreckage now certainly on the surface, boy, that's got to be wearing thin. I mean, just imagine, we're into the sixth week now and they still haven't found one piece of wreckage. They are continuing to tow that ping locator on the ocean shield vessel and that smaller search area. Smaller than it's been.

There's also the HMS Echo there, a British ship that sends down its own sonar and tries to pick up any hard objects on the bottom. But, yes, you've got to think and you were just saying this and you're right, Don, you've got to think it's got to be only a matter of a day or two before they say those pingers are dead now and we've got to use the information we've got. And send down that submersible and have a look on the bottom and see what we can see.

Tony Abbott, the Australian prime minister, he's right when he says it's a massive, massive task. Even going down and having a look under t water, you're talking about a vast area still really and submersible that moves literally at walking pace. He also said something else. He talked about the relatives of those missing aboard that flight 370, and he said if they want to come to Australia, want to come down and be close to where this plane ended its journey, then they would be welcome. Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY ABBOTT, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: At some point, with the agreement of families and the interested governments, we would like to hold a memorial service. And down the track, maybe build a suitable monument. But this is the kind of thing that we would want to be in close consultation with families and with governments about before we finalize.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Meanwhile, Don, the search does continue. A dozen planes are going to be up in the air today. Eleven military, one civilian, and more than a dozen ships. So, you've got those two, the HMS Echo and the Ocean Shield looking in that area where the pings are heard. And then you got a bunch of other ships that are out hundreds of miles to the west because that's where the experts have worked out with the way the ocean moves and the storms that have happened over recent weeks. That's where any wreckage would be if it is still floating.

The weather is going to be pretty good out there. They will be flying at 200 feet. And just sort of see if they can see anything. But as far as the pingers go, Don, I think you're right. I think time is running out for those now.

LEMON: Yes. They haven't run out already.

Thank you very much, Michael Holmes. Appreciate it.

I want to bring in now CNN aviation analyst and retired British royal air force Michael Kay, CNN aviation analyst and pilot Les Abend. Also, there you seem him at the end, famed ocean pioneer Fabien Cousteau and also fame now in his own right, CNN analyst and ocean expert, David Gallo.

So, I want to start with you. Welcome to the panel, by the way. Thank you so for coming in. I just had a conversation, actually, with -- what's his name? The other Cousteau.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Which one?

LEMON: We are getting Jacques, we are getting Fabian.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bob. We are small group.

LEMON: Anyway, I wanted him to come in and talk about it and he's working on a show and he will come in time. OK.

So, listen, I want to start with that part of the world is considered extremely, extremely -- it's considered extreme, right? I should just say an extreme part of the world. How long can they keep looking? Forever? This is very costly. And you know, you have a lot of people out there tiring themselves out every single day looking for this.

FABIEN COUSTEAU, OCEAN ENGINEER: And that is the thing. I mean, you're talking about trying to find an object like the you were looking through the front door keyhole to see what's going on up in the attic. I mean, that's how clueless we are about this area.

We have limited access to technology, although the technology that they're using is fantastic, of course. But there needs to be a lot more of it. And beyond that we just don't know the topography and it's really a pretty remote area as far as the general part of the world is concerned.

To think about it, the ocean represents 3.4 billion cubic kilometers of space within which we've only explored maybe five percent if not less.

LEMON: Do you think we need more assets out there?

COUSTEAU: No. You know, with enough determination of time and of course enough finances, we can pretty much find anything in the oceans. But look what happened with the "titanic," it took us 73 years. With Air France flight it took three years. And we knew approximately where it went down. So this may take a long time.

LEMON: Yes. Even though you knew where it went down. That's amazing. You're looking for a ship as big as the "titanic" and it took 73 years. It is very good point. Very good point.

You know, it is day 37, right? We are talking day 37. You heard what we he said, it took 70 something years. But pingers are supposed to last about 30 days. I mean, how should search teams keep listening? I mean, what is the cutoff? I guess 37 days, 40 days, how long until we exhaust it because they can last as long as 40, 45 days.

MICHAEL KAY, FORMER ADVISOR TO THE UK MILITARY OF DEFENSE: Well -- sorry.

COUSTEAU: No, I was just going to say it really just depends on the process and the determination. Just because the pingers go out doesn't mean you stop searching. It just means the search is much more complicated.

LEMON: Right. And then there comes a point in any search, right? I don't think we've reached that point yet, but where the assets start to back off.

COUSTEAU: Right.

LEMON: And people come up with assumption, it is, we are what we can assume is that flight 370 went down in the ocean and it has not been found and we are backing off the search. That's just normal.

COUSTEAU: MIA, lost at sea, and a write-off.

LEMON: They make a determination. Right, absolutely.

ABEND: But there are so many assets out here and so many countries and people determined to do this. That in of itself seems unprecedented.

KAY: If we make the assumption on the Fabien allude to this, is that we are going to find it. It's just the journey of getting to the location. I think if we listen to the hard facts and the experts say the batteries at the very far end could possibly last up to 40 days, I think it would be sensible and pragmatic for Angus Houston to go to 40 days, maybe a couple of days beyond just so he's absolutely confident that when he deploys his AUVs he's exhausted every opportunity of locating a ping through a ping locator. I that's important.

In Angus Houston's mind he's got to be 100 percent confident that he's done absolutely everything to locate the ping before he goes on to the next phase.

LEMON: David Gallo, what say you?

DAVID GALLO, CNN ANALYST: Well, you know, quitting is not an option. I mean, there is so much at stake here. It's the family and loved ones of passengers. It's the flying public. It's the aeronautical industry. So quitting is not an option.

And you know, again, we're not intimidated by the depth, we're not intimidate bid the terrains. It's a matter of having the right team. It's a matter of having the right technologies, the right operational plan. And then we've got to let them do what I do best and in this case we've got a good team out there, they're great. So they need to start making a systematic map of the seafloor. Start wider than the search area. That is still in needed. And little by little paint that area in until you find the bits of that aircraft or the aircraft in one piece if it's there.

LEMON: David, you mentioned just in the previous show that you said you're not -- in this show you just said you're not intimidate bid the depths. But then you said I think on other side of Australia that they're working twice the depths of this one.

GALLO: Sure.

LEMON: Why aren't they doing that here?

GALLO: Well, one is a scientific mission. It's called a brand new initiative called project Hadal which means really the ocean. And we've got a new type of robot called Nerius that can go down to the greatest ocean depths, even the same depths that James Cameron dove to.

And you know, but that's a scientific mission where everything has been planned out over the years by exactly what that mission going to do. This one on this side is much different. you know, we're after a specific target, finding bits of an aircraft and retrieving two black boxes.

So the only difference really in my mind is one side is driven by scientific question. This side driven by aircraft investigators.

LEMON: Fabien, all four signals detected within 17 miles. It seems relatively small area. Do you agree with that?

COUSTEAU: Depends what you --

LEMON: But when you say 17 miles and you think about 17 miles at -- but then three miles deep.

COUSTEAU: Right. In the grand scheme of things it is a small area. It's still a very large area in terms of the search pattern.

LEMON: Yes. Someone -- I heard someone on the air yesterday, David, it may have been you, saying, OK, so maybe, you know, maybe within 17 miles of each other they have, you know, narrowed, you know, the search area down to a couple hundred miles. But think about that when you're looking at -- from an airplane, right, at, what is it, 30,000 feet or maybe a little bit lower, and look at the size of a bus and then trying to do that in the dark to locate that.

GALLO: Yes.

LEMON: And that's -- there you have it.

GALLO: It's a great -- great way to think of it, Don. When you get out there on the ocean, Fabien know this very well, that it's a whole different world beneath the sea where nothing happens very quickly.

And the deep sea, we don't have GPS. We can't use radio waves. We have to bring our own light, our own power. And there are no maps. And you know, I'm looking forward to the maps that Echo will -- HMS Echo produce. I'm sure they will be fabulous. And I think that will give everyone a bit of a boost because that will show the underwater terrain in incredible detail and give us some sense of it's a workable place.

So, you know, these are things, again, that oceanographers deal with, all of these things routinely. I'm not saying it's easy. It's not easy by any stretch of the imagination but it is nothing that we're unfamiliar with.

LEMON: All right. We're going to continue on in this and talk about the Bluefin-21, speaking of going to the depths of the ocean.

If search crews are finding the wreckage of Malaysia flight 370, this submersible will provide the first images of it. But here's the thing. It's currently sitting on the deck of the Ocean Shield. Why not deploy it? We talked about it. It's the sound. But maybe it will be deployed very shortly.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) LEMON: So right now the Bluefin-21 is sitting on the deck of the Ocean Shield waiting to be sent on its mission. So, Skip is asking what many viewers are asking, you will have to use the Bluefin so why not just use it now? You have already lost pings, why the waste of time?

We shall listen to what U.S. Navy commander William Marks says.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CMDR. WILLIAM MARKS, U.S. NAVY: Once you get the Bluefin in there it's actually taking a picture of the bottom of the ocean floor using sonar cameras. So imagine walking but then every few feet stopping to take a picture of the ground. So that is a much slower, more deliberate, methodical process. Once that starts, we're in it for a good chunk of time. So we really don't want to start that until we have to. And anything we can do to even narrow this sector down even a little bit will be hugely beneficial for using the Bluefin.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: OK. Let's discuss with our panel now which includes audio expert Paul Ginsberg and Geoffrey Thomas, the managing director of airlineratings.com and also may panel her David Gallo, Fabien Cousteau, Les Abend and that guy, that British guy, Michael Kay.

All right, Geoffrey, I want to start with you first. If not now, when? Seriously. Many people are asking that -- Geoffrey?

GEOFFREY THOMAS, MANAGING DIRECTOR, AIRLINERATINGS.COM: Sorry, Don.

Yes, look, it's a very good point. And one of the things that we possibly are under playing a little bit here is the role of HMS Echo, the role maybe oceanographic ship because that is surveying the bottom with an Echo sounder and the bottom as we know is silt and they're hoping for a stronger return from, say, a large metal object, the airplane. And that would obviously narrow it down dramatically. But even if it doesn't pick up anything, it is sweeping the floor, possibly eliminating the areas where we don't need to put the Bluefin- 21 down two.

LEMON: All right, Michael Kay, you're giving him the thumbs up here. Why?

KAY: Yes. I think Geoffrey is spot on. But you know, what I say on this, Don, is that three days in the context of a search that could last for years isn't a long time. And so the question about wasting time, I don't think we are wasting time at all. What we're doing is, Angus Houston is making, as he said earlier, absolutely unequivocal 100 percent sure he can go to better not knowing that he has exhausted all the possibilities. Because as soon as you put it in that's it, that's it. We're in the for the long haul and it could take years.

LEMON: OK. Here is one of you, I think it is -- you pronounced it as, why is there only one Bluefin side scanning sonar? Why can't we use five or six of these to search faster? I think that's a David Gallo question.

GALLO: Good question. We had three similar vehicles. We had the Rema 6,000, three of them on board one ship for the Air France 447 search. We had two of them on the last "titanic" expedition along with an ROB. So we had from the same ship multiple -- multiple AUVs, or underwater drones.

It's tricky. It's a tricky operation. It takes time to learn the ops, how to do that. You know, I think before they shipped that vehicle they thought of what the use would be and that's what they decided. So, again, I'm not going to second-guess the team out at sea. I think if they need more vehicles like that they will bring them in.

LEMON: OK.

GALLO: That's a great question.

LEMON: Yes, that is a good question. Another viewer asked, why if they had a ping for two hours didn't the ship stop and drop the Bluefin at the time?

I think just because they hear it they don't know the exact location so they just can't drop it there. Right, Fabien?

COUSTEAU: Well, Mikey described it correctly. It's not like a GPS pinpoint. You know, sound travels much faster underwater which makes it that much more difficult to triangulate, as Mikey said, where this ping is coming from. Then you have the complications, of course, of water, salinity, and temperatures that bend those sound waves, as well. So it's much more complicated than what it sounds like.

And then you've got, of course, the limited range, these ROVs and AUVs like the Bluefin have in the case of a Bluefin, maybe 24, 25 hours of time at three-ish knots which is actually fairly slow. It's like trying to find a needle while you're taking postage-size pictures of the bottom in a field the size of long island. It is that complicated.

LEMON: All right, OK.

Paul Ginsberg, audio expert. Does it concern you that we haven't heard anything in four days?

PAUL GINSBERG, AUDIO EXPERT: Well, it does. It really gives us an indication that we have it looks like come to the end of the lifetime of the batteries. Certainly hope springs eternal, we would like to hear them some more. But right now, no doubt, all of the engineers aboard the ship are doing an analysis and using enhancement techniques to exactly determine what they heard and which were pings and which weren't.

LEMON: OK. Here's a question, right? So the thing that we got from the JACC, which is a coordinating task force there, says yesterday's search field was a 41,393 square kilometers, which is about 2,571 miles. Today, it's 57, 506 square kilometer, about 35,700 miles.

We have been saying that the search area is contracting. It's expanding.

KAY: It's a airport search. We have to be very clear that there are two key searches going on. One is subsurface and one is on top of the ocean.

LEMON: Do you think that's the airborne search for that?

KAY: Well, I think, you know, we already touched upon today. You got the pas, P-3s and the (INAUDIBLE) 76. As we saw the (INAUDIBLE) coming into land earlier off.

LEMON: That's right. You are right. The authority has planned a visual search area totaling approximate 57,506 square kilometers. The center, though, of the search area lies approximately 2200 kilometers northwest of Perth, is what they're saying. But so, even the visual search area appears to be expanding.

KAY: Yes. I mean, the crews will be searching a specific area and then eliminate that and then using modeling and information data from the people who are all over the currents and the tidal flows. And that's the way it will be working. It's incredibly complex just because they search a specific area doesn't necessarily mean the area will contrast, which is the area is so huge.

And again, they're going back to the remodeling days for the Inmarsat and AEIB (ph) and everything else, there are so many factors to pull in. So I think what we shouldn't do is get confused between the airborne and subsurface search locations. They are very different. The operations are very different. And it's not as simple as searching somewhere airborne wise and the area could contract.

LEMON: All right, gentlemen, stick around. Much, much more on the mystery of flight 370 coming up.

But also a developing story to tell you about. Gunman seized two buildings in Ukraine. The escalating crisis and the consequences facing Russia next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: More on flight 370 just ahead. But new developments I want to tell you about in the crisis in Ukraine. The White House wasting no time in responding to new reports of violence in the eastern part of that country. It is sending vice president Joe Biden to the capital of Kiev on April 22nd. The moved announced after a day of violence were a pro-Russian separatist storm buildings in a city -- at least two cities, excuse me in Kremlin's horse (ph).

Police exchanged gunfire with pro-Russian activists. About 20 men wearing matching military fatigues took control of the city's police headquarters. And just about 70 miles away, gunman stormed two buildings including one building to the police. Three officers were hurt.

The response of the White House, the spokesman said the administration is very concerned about Russia's actions in Ukraine and decided to send the vice president to talk with government leaders and other groups.

Here's part of the White House statement, it says the vice president will discuss the latest developments in eastern Ukraine where pro- Russian separatists apparently with the support of Moscow continue an orchestrated campaign of incitement and sabotage to destabilize the Ukrainian. State.

And just moments ago we learned that secretary of state John Kerry spoke with Russian foreign minister Lavrov on the phone. Kerry says he expressed strong concern that attacks today by armed militants in eastern Ukraine were orchestrated and synchronized similar to previous at tacks in eastern Ukraine and Crimea.

Kerry also threatens additional consequences if Russia does not take steps to de-escalate the situation.

As investigators listen for those elusive pings, that's definitely not the only thing making noise under the waves.

Rosa Flores joins us next. She listened for a pinging signal with underwater microphones and heard much, much more.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Right now search planes are in the air on this the 37th day since flight 370 went missing up to 11 military aircraft, one civil aircraft, 14 ships involved in Sunday's search. We keep hearing words like optimism and confidence related to the hunt for flight 370. But pings that are thought to be from the plane's black box haven't been detected since Tuesday, leading to fears that the batteries in the data recorder are becoming too weak to transmit.

Relatives of missing passengers pet today with Malaysian officials. One mother says she feels like the Malaysian government has forgotten about all things connected to flight 370.

And right now the U.S. Navy's towed ping locator is scouring a narrow section of the Indian Ocean. Over the past week, four possible black box pings have allowed investigators to narrow the search area. So far they've been unable to relocate those sounds. One of the reasons is the because the ocean is such a noisy place. Other sounds under the surface could be drowning out any signals coming from the data recorders.

CNN's Rosa Flores took a pinger out on the water to let us hear some of the obstacles that they may be encountering now. Here she is.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is what a ping sounds like.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Very high frequency.

FLORES: The critical sound searchers are hoping to hear in the deep and rough waters of the Indian Ocean. JAMES MILLER, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND: It's deep and it's dark. It's salty. It's high pressure. It's hard to work.

FLORES: Here in Rhode Island's Narragansett bay, researchers show us the challenges search crews face as they try to hear the ping from flight 370's data recorder.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So this is a hydro phone.

FLORES: We drop an underwater microphone, a hydrophone off the back of the boat as it moves farther away from a pinger that's already been submerged. And even less than 100 yards away, the ping starts to fade. Distance isn't the only problem out in the Indian Ocean. There are other noises competing with the sound of the pinger like sea life. One dolphin species sounds like a black box pinger. And this the sound of rain underwater.

Let me get away from the loudest part of the boat so I can show you one of the biggest obstacles that searchers have in the open sea, just ship noise, even here listen to how loud it is.

They're at a minimum 15,000 ships on the world's oceans on any given day. Creating even more obstacles in a search that's already daunting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: Rosa Flores joins me now.

So Rosa, what did the researchers think about the pings found so far? Do they think that it is consistent with the national ocean sounds or the MH-370 pinger?

FLORES: You know, Don, I talked to ocean g oceanographers in several states around the country. And they all agree on one thing. They say that those first pings that we heard from the Chinese, those were probably sea life, they say. And they say that because of the duration of those pings. These latest pings that we've been talking about, these four pings that have long durations, all of the oceanographers that I have talked to say that's very credible. That's very consistent because of the length of those pings -- Don.

LEMON: Rosa Flores, thank you very much.

Fabien Cousteau is sitting here nodding his head, an ocean explorer saying here in agreement, right?

COUSTEAU: Well, you know, when we talk about the white noise complicating the search, of course, there's the ocean surface, so you've got all the garbage we throw in our oceans which definitely throws an obstacles for that search, for that visual search at the surface. And down below that surface, there's something called noise pollution. And manmade noise pollution is certainly a factor in all of this, as well as just the natural ambient noises that nature makes.

LEMON: Manmade noise like what? What do you mean? COUSTEAU: Things like low and mid-frequency sonar, for example, that have been known to interfere with the nobelium (ph) migrations. But beyond that, it just creates a huge soup of noise.

LEMON: Right. Thus, the issue with putting the sonar in there now because you get that frequency.

Let's find out a lot more about this, about sounds with this precious ping among all that random noise requires huge amounts of skill. Audio experts looks at gazillion of sounds just to find one black box ping.

We have special guest here now to show us some of the sound enhancement technique use in the search for pings.

I'm joined again by expert, audio expert Paul Ginsberg.

So Paul, to the untrained ear, you know, some of these noises might sound blurry or insignificant. So show us the audio experts how they tell the difference.

GINSBERG: OK. What I've done is prepared a simulation for you. First I have a pure tone as if it was coming from a pinger. And we can play that. Nice and clean. Right? But, once we submerge it down three miles and we start to listen from the surface, we're going to hear it embedded in ocean noise.

LEMON: You can barely hear it.

GINSBERG: That's right. And if you don't know what you're listening for or if you're not in range you won't hear it.

LEMON: Can we put that one up again? Let's put that one up again, Paul. Because this is what it sounds like and you're wondering about the sound and why they --

GINSBERG: Why they have trouble hearing it.

LEMON: Is that ocean rain or is that just how the ocean sounds?

GINSBERG: No, this is a simulation using a large amount of white noise. In the ocean we have white noise but also, as Fabien said, a number of other manmade noises and natural sounds.

So what I did was, I employed some forensic audio techniques, some of which were the same that I used in locating the gunshots in the sandy hook shooting 911 tapes. And I want to show you and let you listen to what one level of enhancement of the signal would sound like. You can begin to hear the one-second repetition rate.

LEMON: OK.

GINSBERG: OK. Of course, knowing what the frequency that we're listening for helps so that we can craft digital filters and so on. And that makes it a little easier to -- to ascertain what we're listening to. OK. Finally, another round of enhancement using more tools in our tool box and we'll get something that really sounds identifiable. With the exact repetition rate of one second and the period exactly stable.

LEMON: OK.

GINSBERG: Now, just so you know, under the ocean there are lots of different paths that the sound can take. And the effect of this is multiple sounds reaching the receiver which would tend to make echoes and make it not as distinct. And that's some of the problem that they have in identifying these sounds.

LEMON: Paul, that is fascinating. When you were here last week, and we're so glad -- we learned so much from you, every time you come on. So let's -- let's do it again in order, guys. So this first one is what they're looking for no, enhancement. And then you can hear exactly why they have so much trouble. That's a clear -- that's clear -- that's the one that it sounds like right out of the water. That's the way it's supposed to sound.

GINSBERG: Correct.

LEMON: OK. And the second one is --

GINSBERG: That's where we begin. Pretty noisy.

LEMON: Can you imagine listening for that? You know, hours at a time and 12-hour stretches at a time? And one this one is a little -- a little bit of enhancement.

GINSBERG: Correct. Correct.

LEMON: OK. And this one is --

GINSBERG: This one is the final version and, of course, it could even be improved upon more if we needed to, to make precision measurements in the period to identify what we're hearing.

LEMON: And they can do this out on the ship? Can they enhance like this out on the ship?

GINSBERG: Hopefully. I expect they can, yes. There are special forensic software packages that allow us to do this on the fly.

LEMON: OK. Stand by. We're going to continue our conversation on the other side of the break. And my panel of experts will weigh in on this. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: All right, welcome back with my panel of experts now. And also with audio expert, Paul Ginsberg who is really been giving us some great demonstration here.

So Paul, you showed us the difference between, you know, unenhanced ping in the ocean and then one that is enhanced. And Mikey Kay, you have a question for him.

KAY: Well, I think the point you make on filtering enhancements is absolutely fascinating. I just kind of want to get a sense of how long that process of analysis takes once you actually get the initial recording.

GINSBERG: Well, one of my professors in college once said, if you do 90 percent planning you only have to do 10 percent work. And I've always loved that quote. And so the way that applies to this problem is, you need to know how to characterize what you're looking for with respect to frequency, duration, and periodic rate so that you can tailor your filters to accept only that type of signal.

And once you do that, you've stripped away so much of the job and the work and you can get to it much faster. So a lot of the --

KAY: A lot of the key aspects is the preplanning, but the proactive bit and that will reduce the timelines afterwards.

GINSBERG: Absolutely.

KAY: Got it.

LEMON: Remember -- Go ahead. Paul, sorry. Go ahead.

GINSBERG: I would say, I would love one of the manufacturers of these pingers to do experiments, listening, recording, in various different depths, even in different parts of the world, and make charts and recordings so that we could analyze so we could then know what type of filter that we need to use under different circumstances.

And so Geoffrey Thomas, in Perth, remember we were sitting here wondering why, when the Ocean Shield was going on, where is there this big delay, this big delay? And now we see why, because, as the audio expert is saying, the -- all the differences made, the important part is in the preplanning and that's what they were trying to get together in the initial stages of looking for these pings.

THOMAS: No doubt.

Looking, Don, and the example that's been shown than extraordinary. And we're all getting some very interesting lessons in oceanography and acoustic sounds. But what we're seeing at the moment in this very small search area, not the large one but the very confined one, we're seeing the Ocean Shield go through with the pinger -- towed pinger locator. It does a sweep through and then exit the search area and then HMS Echo comes in behind it and it's doing methodical echo sounding search on the bottom as well.

I think they're putting a lot of hope in the fact that -- first of all, getting some more pings, obviously. But that hope is fading fast. But they're also hope that Echo will pick up something on the bottom or if nothing else, eliminate an area where there was no positive return off the bottom. So when they do put the Bluefin-21 down the area is going to be reduced even further and make this pain staking process just that little bit shorter. LEMON: Yes. Absolutely right, Geoffrey Thomas.

Did you have a question or that you wanted for, Mikey?

KAY: No. I was just fascinated to sort of continue that conversation with Paul on the proactive piece.

Paul, if you are still on, how much does temperature, salinity and pressure and all of these thermal layers in the depths of the ocean, how much does that affect the process being proactive?

LEMON: That was last week's lesson, but go ahead, Paul.

KAY: Sorry.

GINSBERG: In review -- well, there is, you know, everything changes. Wherever we are, we have to try to make models. But we don't know exactly because, as you know, weather plays an important role, the tides, the current, and so on. So you have to try to plan as much as you can but then tailor it when you see what the actual conditions are and that's important.

But another point is about the power of the pingers. The power of the pingers is approximately, I believe, a tenth of a watt and it's pulse sod that the battery life is extended and we're only really a miles from it and we're receiving echoes from different parts because of the thermal layers.

LEMON: Can you tell your story about how sound travels really quickly? OK.

My producer is telling me to do it after break. Paul, don't go anywhere. Panel, don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

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LEMON: We're back now getting a very fascinating lesson in acoustics and listening for black box pings. OK.

So the first one is just how the pinger sounds when it's not in the water. And then the next one is what they are hearing out in the ocean unenhanced. Believe it or not there is a ping there in the background. This one is one level of enhancement. And since they know the frequency, our audio expert Paul Ginsberg says they can do this with it.

And we are back now with our audio expert Paul Ginsberg who is giving us, again, a very valuable and fascinating lesson in sound.

And Paul, we're talking about, you know, traveling, what did we say, 17 miles. You are saying -- you said you had an experience just recently that demonstrates just how far sound can travel can travel.

GINSBERG: OK. Well, actually it was when I was a young man and I was riding across the Tarboro bridge in Manhattan and I had a CB radio I converted to the Hamm radio frequencies. , and it was only four watts. That's the power of a night light. And I was able to contact a fellow in a sailboat off the coast of Australia. And we spoke for ten minutes. I put my hood up and pretended that I had broken down. And I guess I should apologize to all those cars that were behind me at the time.

But the reason that we were able to make communications, contact, is because of the reflection of the different layers of the atmosphere. Otherwise, my signals would have just gone into space. But rather, they go around the earth and so on.

And so it is under the water where there are reflections from different thermal layers and different solidity areas. We have different gradients, temperature, and solidity. And those form walls, as it were, to reflect the signals and make echoes.

If there are too many echoes it can really produce a fuzzy image that makes it very difficult to ascertain what you're listening to and certainly to measure the beginning and end of a pulse. So that's what they're dealing with. They've got considerable job ahead of them.

LEMON: Can you stick around and anchor the next hour for me? I mean, we're all sitting here like -- just sort of, you know, amazed by the knowledge that you have and the way you explain it. It's really wonderful.

So, what you're saying is that you're not surprised that they may be picking up sounds from further off than one might think.

GINSBERG: I'm not surprised and I also have very deep respect for -- and admiration for the people who are doing the job of trying to analyze these sounds. It is not cut and dried. This is difficult task.

COUSTEAU: And there's a speed factor, too, in terms of sound traveling under water. Paul, can you give us a reference on that?

GINSBERG: Well, it really varies from warm to cold and, again, the movement of the water. And this is why I would love to see a handbook written as a result of experiments done and trials in various depths of different waters recording all of the -- all of the different characteristics of the water and terrain for each of them.

LEMON: Paul, we've got to go.

GINSBERG: Yes, sir.

LEMON: All right.

GINSBERG: OK.

LEMON: We've got to go. We're going to save it for next hour. It's has been 37 days and no sign of Malaysia airlines 370. If wreckage is found, is Malaysia up to the task of solving this mystery in that's next.

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