March 8, 2014 marked the day when Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished during its journey from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. This incident triggered an extensive and costly search, but despite finding some debris, the plane, along with its passengers and crew, remains missing.
However, a recent study has proposed a fascinating method that could potentially locate the aircraft almost a decade later. And the key lies in barnacles.
About a year after the crash, Gregory Herbert, a geoscientist from the University of South Florida, came across photos of debris that had washed ashore on Réunion Island, off the coast of Africa. To his surprise, he noticed barnacles on the debris.
“The debris was covered in barnacles, and as soon as I saw that, I immediately began sending emails to the search investigators because I knew the geochemistry of their shells could provide clues to the crash location,” Herbert explained.
One particular piece of the wing, known as the flaperon, was confirmed to have barnacles of the species Lepas anatifera attached to it. This discovery excited Herbert because barnacle shells grow daily, with each layer influenced by the temperature of the water they inhabit.
This growth pattern is similar to how tree rings can reveal a tree’s age and the weather conditions it experienced, or how ancient corals can indicate that Earth had longer days millions of years ago. By examining the temperature record within the barnacles and comparing it with oceanographic modeling, it might be possible to trace the path of the barnacles and the flaperon back to the crash site.
The crash is believed to have occurred in a north-south corridor called “The Seventh Arc,” where temperatures fluctuate rapidly, making it easier to track the path.
Herbert had the opportunity to test this method on younger barnacles from the wreckage, after refining the process of extracting precise temperature data from barnacles grown in the lab.
“Flaperon colonization (drift origin) occurred in warmer waters around 27°C [80°F], followed by a shift to continuously cooler waters around 23-24°C [73-75°F] for a significant part of the latter drift,” the team explained in their study. “This is consistent with an earlier drift modeling experiment, which showed that the MH370 flaperon should have had a leftward (southward) trajectory into cooler waters as it drifted across the Indian Ocean.”
The team conducted a particle-tracking simulation, releasing 50,000 “particles” in the Indian Ocean east of Réunion Island from potential drift points, to identify areas of interest. From this, they selected the top five drift fits for further investigation.
“Each of these drifters spent their last five months drifting west of longitude 70°E, south of 20°S, and within 1,500 km [932 miles] of Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean,” the team stated. “Only one drifter eventually reached waters around Réunion Island (within 220 km [137 miles]) by the end of the simulation.”
The study demonstrates that reconstructing the path of the debris could be feasible, significantly narrowing down the search area. However, the team acknowledges the need to refine their methods and gain access to older barnacles.
“Sadly, they have not yet been made available for research, but with this study, we’ve proven this method can be applied to a barnacle that colonized on the debris shortly after the crash to reconstruct a complete drift path back to the crash origin,” Herbert said.
The team hopes that this innovative approach will aid in resuming the search for the plane, potentially bringing closure to the families of those on board.
The study has been published in AGU Advances.
