Hunt for Amelia Earhart's plane enters critical phase

A renewed search for Amelia Earhart’s missing plane has entered a critical phase, with a Purdue University team arriving Monday at remote Nikumaroro Island in the South Pacific to investigate a potential sighting from satellite imagery. The work will be complicated by an infestation of three-foot-wide, 9-lb coconut crabs, forcing researchers to spend nights away from the island on their boat. Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared July 2, 1937, after their Lockheed 10E Electra ran low on fuel during an attempt to fly around the world. British colonists later found items including a woman’s shoe and airplane parts, and NASA-cited reports include campfire evidence and eaten animal bones. The team plans surveys starting at the island’s Taraia Peninsula, using an underwater magnetometer, sonar, a hydroprobe, and an induction dredge to probe and clear sediment around an object believed to be about 10 feet offshore and roughly five feet deep.