Search for Amelia Earhart's plane resumes after stormy weather

ByAleks Phillips

A search for the wreckage of Amelia Earhart's plane on a remote island in the Pacific Ocean has resumed after severe weather caused researchers to stop for several days.

A team has travelled to Nikumaroro Island, part of Kiribati, hoping to solve the mystery of the famed aviator's disappearance by investigating the so-called Taraia Object, spotted in the atoll's lagoon in aerial imagery.

The American pioneer vanished while attempting to circumnavigate the globe in 1937, spawning decades of speculation about her fate.

Rough seas and strong winds forced the team to remain on their research vessel for three days, until the weather cleared on Sunday.

"We are finally getting off the ship and able to land on Nikumaroro," Sirisha Bandla, a technology specialist who is part of the expedition, said in a video update from the deck of the Marin Mainiku.

The researchers arrived at the uninhabited atoll last week and began an underwater survey of the area of interest.

But the weather - powered by strong El Niño conditions in the Pacific - has so far prevented them from beginning a second of three phases, in which underwater objects will be probed to determine their depth and sediment will be dredged.

"We're working to get everything done today if we can," Bandla said. "The crew's really excited."

Earhart had already successfully flown from California across South America, Africa and Asia in her twin-engine Lockheed Electra when she arrived in Lae, Papua New Guinea on 2 July 1937.

From there, she and her navigator Fred Noonan had planned to travel towards Hawaii and then finally back to California.

But her plane vanished without a trace while trying to reach Howland Island, a remote, uninhabited coral island near Nikumaroro, to refuel.

One theory is that Earhart unintentionally navigated to Nikumaroro, where she ditched her plane and died a castaway.

Images of the so-called Taraia Object - which Purdue University says is visible in photography dating back to 1938 - show what could be the remnants of a small aircraft sitting in shallow waters, though other explorers remain sceptical.

Interest in the expedition prompted New Zealand's Air Force Museum to publish, external previously unseen reconnaissance images of Nikumaroro on Friday.

While the Taraia Object is not obviously visible in any of the black-and-white slides, taken in 1938 from a seaplane, they do show the beached wreck of the SS Norwich City, a British merchant vessel that ran aground on the island during a storm in 1929, killing 11.

Purdue, which with the US-based Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI) is spearheading the expedition, said the incident demonstrated the risks surrounding the island.

To get into the atoll's lagoon, a boat has to navigate through a narrow gap created in the reef by the British in 1963 - the last time the island was inhabited.

But the university said wind gusts of up to 27 knots (31mph) present around the island until Sunday meant the transport boat could be knocked into the reef by crashing waves.

However, it said the Norwich City wreck may lend credence to the researchers' theory.

Purdue said a 15-year-old in Florida reported hearing Earhart's voice repeating "New York City" over her father's shortwave radio shortly after the aviator vanished. Proponents of the castaway theory argue this may have been a misunderstanding of Earhart giving her location as near the Norwich City.

As a result of the three-day hold, the research team has extended the expedition time to complete its fieldwork and has yet to indicate whether they had found any promising evidence of Earhart's plane.

ALI director Rick Pettigrew said the team was aware of the global interest in the expedition and would share its results "as soon as we are able". Purdue suggested before the poor weather hit that it could identify the Taraia Object in a matter of days.

While researchers have previously found evidence of a human presence on the island around the time of Earhart's disappearance, some skeptics believe the Taraia Object was just a tree that had fallen from the atoll into the lagoon.

Previous attempts to find her Electra have also come up short.

In 2024, a group of researchers said they may have found it lying around 4,877m (16,000ft) below the surface near Howland Island through sonar imaging - but this was later confirmed to be a rock formation.

Similarly, an expedition in 2019 to investigate a photograph of what might have been landing gear protruding from the water near Nikumaroro also failed to find anything.