The-Ave.US

Two  new “ping” signals have been  detected, confirming two earlier signals locating   Malaysia Airlines Flight  MH370 may be within the 1,300 square kilometer search area>  it is, however, not certain these all cme from the same source.

“I’d say they are separate acoustic events,” said U.S. Navy  Captain Mark Matthews “There has been variability in the geographic position which  leads me to be less optimistic than I would be if I could  consistently reacquire the signal so that I have a nice, small  geographic area to focus the autonomous under water vehicle  search on,”

“The ocean is a noisy place,” said Mike Davis-Marks, former  commander of a sister vessel to British hunter-killer submarine  HMS Tireless which has been dispatched to assist in the search.

“There is noise from everything, whether it’s the ambient  noise of the weather at the surface, or marine life like whales  or the snapping noise of shrimps, not to mention other sea  transport and low-flying aircraft.”

Despite the new signals, Angus Houston, the director of the search operation,  insisted that search teams  should exhaust the capability of planes and vessels before  deploying underwater vehicles.

“Bear in mind, that the time spent on the surface we’re  covering six times more area and any given time than we’ll be  able to do when we go underwater,” Houston said.

“So with the batteries likely to fade or fail very shortly,  we need to get as much positional data as we can so that we can  define a very small search area.”