60 Minutes Australia brings a panel of experts together to discuss the search for MH370
Deep-sea explorer James Cameron has said it's no surprise that the missing MH370 plane has not yet been found and that it would be "human arrogance" to think otherwise.
Almost four years since the filmmaker said he believed the plane would never be found due to a lack of "vehicle funding", the Titanic director told news.com.au there was still no end in sight for one of aviation's greatest mysteries.
In Sydney earlier this week as part of Vivid Ideas and to launch his major new exhibition at the Australian National Maritime Museum, James Cameron — Challenging The Deep, he told news.com.au that finding the missing plane at the bottom of the ocean is like finding a needle in a haystack.
Deep-sea explorer and film director James Cameron explains why he thinks the plane would never be found. Photo / Getty Images
"An anomaly the size of an air frame won't show up on the data that we have now," he told news.com.au.
"We know more about the surface of Mars or the Moon than we do our deepest oceans. The equipment that I've designed is specifically designed to explore deep and local to an already identified site of scientific interest.
"Once they find a site, I'm a specialist in wreck sites, you give me a wreck site and I know how to explore it, I know how to map it, I know how to use small robotics to go in and analyse it and do the wreck forensics on it.
"I'm not saying that's something that would excite me, going to an aircraft site — personally I'm more interested in ships."
His research of sunken vessels, including the Titanic and German battleship the Bismarck, has revealed new clues about the fate of the ships and how they sunk.
He said that despite searching thousands of square kilometres of deep ocean, the missing Malaysia Airlines flight could be anywhere.
"The ocean is huge mate, people really have no idea. We have this sense that everything is explored and we've got it all wrapped up and we've got our satellites, but the second you go below the water it's a vast unknown.
Director James Cameron attends the Deepsea Challenger photocall at California Science Centre. Photo / Getty Images
"We're talking hundreds of thousands of square miles of ocean, most of it unmapped. We don't know what that bottom looks like and it will take us decades to survey it all.
"Now if one were to mount an enormous search across the entire western Pacific and Indian Ocean we'd learn an awful lot, it'd be great. I'd love for somebody to throw a few billion [dollars] at that. We'd learn an awful lot about the deep ocean.
"It's human arrogance to think we know so much about the Earth."
Cameron's comments come as the US technology company which has been scouring the ocean floor for more than three months failed to find the wreck site and today, officially ended its search.
Texas-based Ocean Infinity chief executive Oliver Plunkett said 112,000sq km of remote ocean floor had been searched — more than four times larger than the proposed crash zone around the Indian Ocean.
"I would firstly like to extend the thoughts of everyone at Ocean Infinity to the families of those who have lost loved ones on MH370. Part of our motivation for renewing the search was to try to provide some answers to those affected," Mr Plunkett said in a statement.
"It is therefore with a heavy heart that we end our current search without having achieved that aim," he said.
Australian Transport Minister Michael McCormack said the search for the missing plane was the largest in aviation history and had tested the boundaries of what humans and technology could achieve at such deep depths.
The four-year search for the plane culminated in a $200 million price tag. The Boeing 777 vanished on March 8, 2014 on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Experts initially predicated a possible crash site in the South China Sea before more analysis drew up a different flight path. Experts used analysis of wreckage found washed ashore to determine possible crash sites.
The Operational Search for MH370, published in the Australian Transport Safety Bureau's report, shows the "x marks the spot" moment, where the final attempted satellite handshake was recorded.
Mr McCormack acknowledged fresh searches may one day be launched if new technologies emerge but said he doubts Australia will again take part "at this stage", according to AAP.
"But it looks as though this will remain a mystery for the time being," he said.
"We've got to remember the actual plane is about 60m long — that's about four times less than the Titanic — which they took more than 70 years to find knowing exactly the co-ordinates of where it went down," he told AAP.
"This is a very deep ocean, this is a large aircraft admittedly, but not that large that it was obviously easily detectable."
