In search of Amelia Earhart

A deep-sea search and investigation mission that is tasked with gathering information about climate change and, more intriguing, finding the wreckage of Amelia Earhart's plane is scheduled to commence this fall, in the waters near Nikumaroro, an uninhabited island in the southwestern Pacific.

The expedition will be conducted by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) who, during 10 earlier quests to the Nikumaroro island, have uncovered a significant number of artifacts indicating a castaway's presence which, combined with data regarding Earhart's last flight, strongly point that the pilot might have died as a castaway.

Their theory goes that Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan lived for a few good weeks as castaways after making an emergency landing on the flat coral reef at the western end of Nikumaroro.

Amelia Earhart mysteriously disappeared 77 years ago during a flight around the Equator.

In addition to searching for Earhart's twin-engined Lockheed Electra plane wreckage, scientists want to study the reef that is believed to be the last intact oceanic coral archipelago ecosystems that looks exactly like it did thousands of years ago.

'We're looking for airplane wreckage. They're looking to see what kinds of coral are there and what condition they're in. They also want to see what fish are living down there,' Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR explained.