Researchers arrive at Nikumaroro in search of Amelia Earhart’s plane

Could a nearly 90-year-old mystery be solved soon? Crews trying to learn what happened to Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, have arrived at a remote South Pacific atoll in search of answers.

It took five days and 830 nautical miles to reach the small island of Nikumaroro, where researchers spotted a visual anomaly in satellite images that they believe could be Earhart’s plane, a Lockheed Electra 10-E, Purdue said in a news release. The anomaly, called the Taraia Object, was first seen in 2020, the BBC said.

This is the first authorized trip to Nikumaroro in seven years and the first to the Taraia Peninsula in more than 15 years, Purdue said, which is conducting the investigation with the Archaeological Legacy Institute.

The crew is on the Marin Mainiku, which arrived on the western side of the landmass that is part of the Phoenix Islands of the Republic of Kiribati. They then moved to the eastern end of the island for calmer conditions as they made final preparations before crossing to the lagoon, where the possible aircraft was seen.

They will have to transport equipment and clear vegetation before setting up a staging area on the south side of the lagoon.

They will also have to contend with large coconut crabs, also known as Robber crabs, which hunt at night for small mammals and seabirds. The crabs’ presence will require the crew of 17 researchers to return to the Marin Mainiku every night for their safety, the BBC reported.

Once everything is set up, the archaeological work begins as they survey the land for artifacts in the sand while maritime archaeologists set up a grid to help them plot items that may be underwater. The item, which could be the plane or a tree, is about 10 feet from the shore and could be as little as 5 feet underwater, but under sediment.

They will use a magnetometer to detect ferrous metals. Although the plane was made of aluminum, components inside could still provide a reading.

Earhart and Noonan had flown from California across South America, Africa and Asia before arriving in Papua New Guinea on July 2, 1937. They planned to fly toward Hawaii, but they vanished as they tried to reach Howland Island to refuel, the BBC said.

Nikumaroro Island is about 350 miles southeast of Howland and 2,100 miles from Hawaii, according to USA Today.

Theories for the disappearance range from communication problems to the plane running out of fuel and crashing. She had radioed to the Coast Guard cutter USCGC Itasca, which was waiting for them, that they were nearly out of fuel. The US Navy searched for the wreckage for 16 days and concluded that the plane crashed after running out of fuel, USA Today reported.

However, as the publication pointed out, radio transmissions and other discoveries suggest they may have landed on Nikumaroro Reef and survived as castaways for a while.

Human bones were found on the island in 1940, and in 2018, analysis suggested they belonged to a woman with a stature like Earhart’s. The island also yielded artifacts such as a woman’s shoe, a compact case, a freckle cream jar, and a medicine vial dating to the 1930s.

Another abnormality, called the Bevington Object, captured three months after the plane disappeared, appeared to resemble one of the Electra’s landing gear, USA Today reported.

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