Search for MH370 unveils a lost world deep beneath the ocean

They look like visions from Game of Thrones — towering mountains, dramatic valleys, strings of volcanoes.

An image of ‘faulted volcanoes’ produced from the MH370 search area. Picture: Geoscience Australia

They look like visions from the more sci-fi landscapes of Game of Thrones — towering, sharp mountains and ridges, dramatic blue-tinged canyon valleys winding into the distance, strings of volcanoes bursting out of the ground.

What was not found in the extra­ordinary underwater landscape was what the Australian Transport Safety Bureau was looking for: the remains of ­Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 and the 239 souls on board.

But in the process of unsuccessfully hunting for MH370, the ATSB commissioned surveys of the sea bed that reveal stunning, never before seen images of some of deepest parts of the world’s oceans ever mapped in such ­detail.

The released data has been put up on the website of Geoscience Australia.

The images also have again highlighted just how challenging the hunt for the Boeing 777 was in the 120,000sq km search area ­selected by the ATSB in the southern Indian Ocean.

The searchers had to navigate their sonar imaging “tow fish” around massive underwater ­features that could hide aircraft debris at depths of up to 6km.

Some of the underwater canyons were scanned by an autonomous, torpedo-like machine that was pre-programmed to hunt for MH370 on its own and return to the surface after completing its mission.

Despite extensive mapping of the sea floor before actually beginning search operations, one of the vessels involved, the Fugro Discovery, early last year ran its tow fish into what was described as “a mud volcano which rises 2200m from the sea floor”.

The vessel lost the tow fish, although the sonar imaging device was later recovered.

MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014 on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with 239 people on board. It deviated from its planned route 40 minutes into the flight, with its radar transponder turned off and radio communications cut.

Primary radar and automatic satellite tracking signals indicate the aircraft doubled back over Malaysia before turning on a long track south.

Marine scientists and geologists have been salivating ahead of the release of the mapping data.

Chief of Geoscience Australia’s environmental geoscience division, Stuart Minchin, said only 10-15 per cent of the world’s oceans had been surveyed with the kind of technology used in the search for MH370, making this remote part of the Indian Ocean “among the most thoroughly mapped regions of the deep ocean on the planet”.

Dr Minchin pointed to images revealing ridges 6km wide and 15km long that rise 1500m above the sea floor, and fault valleys 1200m deep and 5km wide.

“This data will contribute to a greater understanding of the ­geology of the deep ocean and the complex processes that occur there,” he said.

At the request of Malaysia the ATSB planned and directed the $200 million search for MH370, but critics in the professional aviation and air crash investigation community claim it was flawed in assuming the aircraft crashed in an unpiloted dive rather than being flown to the end and outside the search area by a rogue pilot.

Families of the victims in Australia and overseas have expressed anger at the refusal of ATSB chief commissioner Greg Hood to agree to a freedom of information request from The Australian to release assessments of the satellite data from international experts the bureau claims back up its “death dive” theory.

The ATSB is keen to renew the search in an area immediately to the north of that surveyed, but the Malaysian government has insisted it will not be resumed without new credible information indicating the precise location of the aircraft.