A team of researchers have arrived at a remote island to inspect possible plane wreckage of famed aviator Amelia Earhart, who vanished in 1937 while flying around the world.
The group from the Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI) and Purdue University arrived at Nikumaroro Island in the Pacific Ocean on Monday.
The search team’s work, expected to take five days, could be hampered by giant land-dwelling crabs, as well as the El Niño climate phenomenon which is now the strongest ever recorded.
Coconut crabs, also known as Robber crabs, emerge at night to hunt for small mammals and seabirds, and will force the search crew to spend nights on their ship for their own safety.
The disappearance of Earhart, an American aviation pioneer who was attempting to circumnavigate the globe with navigator Fred Noonan, has spawned decades of speculation.
Researchers will work to locate what has been called the Taraia Object, first spotted sitting on the edge of a lagoon off Nikumaroro in satellite imagery in 2020.
Some believe it to be the wreckage of her plane, but others have expressed scepticism that it is an aircraft at all, with one theory suggesting it is a collapsed tree.
This is the first authorised trip to Nikumaroro Island in seven years, and the first visit to the Taraia Peninsula in more than 15, according to Purdue.
The ship, the Marin Mainiku, on Monday arrived at the western side of the island, part of the nation of Kiribati, after a five-day voyage crossing 830-nautical-miles through the South Pacific.
“It is incredibly rewarding to be this close to completing our inspection of the Taraia Object and potentially solving, at long last, the outstanding mystery of the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan more than 89 years ago,” expedition leader Rick Pettigrew said in a blog post on Monday.
