U.S. Navy dive teams aboard small boats are assisting in the effort to find wreckage from AirAsia's Flight 8501.
The crews from San Diego-based USS Sampson and USS Fort Worth are very aware that this is delicate operation.
“We offer our sincerest condolences to the members of the families who have been impacted by this terrible tragedy,” Commander Kendall Bridgewater told NBC 7.
The plane crashed in the Java Sea on Dec. 28 on its way from Indonesia to Singapore, presumably killing all 162 people onboard. Since then, search teams have pulled 37 bodies from the water, but they are still searching for the main cabin.
The first task for the Navy teams is to help find larger pieces of wreckage. The boats will travel at high speeds to cover more area using sonar equipment dropped into the water on a line.
“We'll give out as much as 300 feet and we can see everything on the sea floor using our computer so it's all in real time,” said Navy Diver Second Class Daniel Clarke, one of the team members.
He said once the team detects an item under the water they can slow their speed to get a much clearer look.
“We can find anything as small as a golf ball or something as big as an airplane,” Clarke said.
Local
NBC7 got a close look at how these systems work during a recent Navy training exercise off San Diego's coast. We watched as unmanned underwater vessels were dropped deep into the ocean and monitored from computers inside a littoral combat ship, much like USS Fort Worth. The devices are usually used to search for underwater mines.
In this case, it is the black boxes from the AirAsia plane that the crew members and dive teams are looking for, a mission to help provide answers to as to what caused the crash of Flight 8501.
