`No other AUVs better than Bluefin-21 to operate at depth of 4,500m'

PERTH: The Bluefin-21 deployed in the underwater search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean is considered the best autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) for such an operation.
Charitha Pattiaratchi, professor of coastal oceanography at the University of Western Australia, said there might be only a few AUVs that could withstand the underwater pressure at depths of 4,500 metres, with the same capabilities as Bluefin-21.
"There are instruments that can go down to similar depths but there aren't that many. This is the best that we have and we have to work with that," he said when interviewed by the Malaysian media here.
Bluefin-21 is being deployed in the hope of locating any debris of the missing plane underwater since no further confirmed 'ping' signals consistent with those from an aircraft's black box have been picked up by the towed pinger locator since April 8.
The Malaysian Boeing 777-200 aircraft disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard on March 8.
Bluefin-21, which uses side-scan sonar to create a three-dimensional map to chart any debris on the ocean floor, was deployed on its fifth mission Friday. No concrete evidence has yet been found based on data analysis from the unmanned mini-submarine's previous four missions.
To a question, Pattiaratchi said there were devices capable of going down more than 5,000 metres into the ocean. However, he said, such vessels operated differently compared to Bluefin-21, including moving at much slower speeds.
The underwater search zone for the missing Malaysian plane is currently a 1,300-sq-km patch of the seabed.
Flight MH370 left the KL International Airport at 12.41am and disappeared from radar screens about an hour later while over the South China Sea. It was to have arrived in Beijing at 6.30 am on the same day.
A multinational search was mounted for the Boeing 777-200ER aircraft, first in the South China Sea and then, after it was learnt that the plane had veered off course, in the southern Indian Ocean.
After an analysis of satellite data indicated that the plane's last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth, Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak announced on March 24 that Flight MH370 "ended in the southern Indian Ocean". – Bernama