Norwagian firm ready to join MH370 search with deep-sea equipment

Swire Seabed, a Bergen-based Norwegian company involved in the search of a missing Air France jetliner years back, said it is ready to join a similar hunt aimed at locating the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. "It takes time to search for objects on the seabed. For example, it will take about three weeks to perform a search operation in an area of 1000 square kilometers, depending on water depth," said Frode Gaupaas, chief operating officer of Swire Seabed. "We are ready to join the search if we are asked about it," he told the Aftenposten, a Norwegian-language newspaper. The company owns one of the few mini-submarines that can dive 6,000 meters deep in the sea. The vessel "Seabed Worker", which was used in the search for an Air France plane in the Atlantic, will be shipped to Australia when requested, said Gaupaas, who participated in the highly time-consuming search for the plane, which crashed into the Atlantic with all 216 passengers and 12 crew members on June 1, 2009. Describing deep-sea search as a highly specialized expertise, Gaupaas said that all available data -- maps, photographs, wind and weather -- must be collected and analyzed to assess the most likely position of the aircraft. Side scan sonar and autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) are often employed for locating objects on the seabed. Mini-submarines can film findings in real time and use remote-controlled arms (robot arms) to highlight parts of a crashed plane, said Gaupaas . "If you have made a discovery of the wreckage, the first priority is to find and raise the flight data recorders and other parts that may be significant to find out what happened to the plane," said Gaupaas.