Almost 90 years after the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan, a fall expedition is being planned to search for her lost aircraft. The project leader recently visited Pensacola to meet with two local members of his team and to make connections with the military community.
Dr. Richard Pettigrew, executive director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI) and founder of the Archaeology Channel, is leading the expedition, in partnership with Purdue University and the Purdue Research Foundation. Their mission is to investigate an unexpected feature spotted in an image taken off the coast of a remote island in the South Pacific, where Earhart’s plane is believed to have landed in 1937.
“The Taraia Object, which is the focus of our work, was seen first in 2020 by Michael Ashmore in California,” said Pettigrew, referencing an anomaly seen in an Apple Maps satellite image of the island of Nikumaroro. “He brought it to people's attention at that time. Most particularly, he informed TIGHAR, The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, headed up by Rick Gillespie. I learned about it at the time, but I didn't pay much attention at that time. “
But Pettigrew was inspired to take another look at drone footage he’d taken during a trip to the island in 2017.
“And I found the Taraia Object that I had captured an image of it from four different directions from my drone, unbeknownst to me at the time, because nobody knew that it existed at that time,” he shared. “Well, I started becoming more interested in it. I invited Mike Ashmore to come to Eugene, where we were having a symposium on the Amelia Earhart disappearance, and he made a presentation. I was sufficiently impressed that I wanted to learn more.”
Pettigrew gathered some associates, who pooled their resources to fund efforts to get more satellite images. After much examination, they determined that the object, which had been embedded in the sediment in a lagoon off Nikumaroro, first became visible in April 2015 after it was uncovered by the passage of powerful Tropical Cyclone Pam.
Going back in time, a 2001 TIGHAR video showed a glint or reflection coming from the lagoon bottom. Additionally, the organization has been gathering supporting evidence — in their many trips there since 1989 — for the Nikumaroro Hypothesis.
“Excavating at what's called the Seven Site, which is the location of the bones discovery in 1940, and the evidence there is pretty good,” noted Pettigrew. He also pointed to artifacts that appear to be related to an American female of the 1930s, including the famous freckle cream jar. “Amelia Earhart was famously ashamed of her freckles. But anyway, she had freckle cream and there's a freckle cream jar found there, along with some other cosmetics items, and other items that were made in America in the 1930s.”
Other evidence includes radio transmissions coinciding with the time and region where Earhart’s plane is believed to be lost. Also, there’s a documented photograph from October 1937, which shows a blob on the reef, which was likely the landing gear of her Electra aircraft.
Now after a couple of false starts, Pettigrew is preparing to lead a 16-person team on a long trip to the South Pacific for the Taraia Object Expedition in October.
His crew includes two individuals from Pensacola.
“Michael Krivor and Will Wilson will be coming with us. They are with RECON Offshore, which is a Pensacola archaeological firm which has a great reputation and a lot of experience over decades now doing underwater archaeology including with aircraft,” Pettigrew stated. “So, they're ideally situated, ideally experienced, to work with us on this project.”
Krivor is a co-founder of RECON Offshore, along with Jason Burns, a Navy Veteran and graduate of the University of West Florida maritime archaeology program.
“They do a lot of support with our program, so our students get some real-world experience,” said Wilson, a faculty research associate for the UWF Archaeology Institute, discussing his professional collaboration with Krivor and Burns, who helped him get a spot on the team searching for Earhart’s plane.
“I work with those guys a lot, and they wanted kind of a data specialist to go out there with them. And so that was my connection," said Wilson. "They actually brought me into this project with Rick and the rest of the team. And, so that was sometime last year, so really from the time the object was identified, that visual anomaly.”
Much of the project is sponsored by Purdue University and the Purdue Research Foundation, because of Earhart’s affiliation with the institution.
It was, in part, the association with Purdue that led Pettigrew to Pensacola earlier this month, so he could meet with the local members of team and make connections with active-duty and retired Navy and Coast Guard leaders here.
“I mean it was a great opportunity, to spread the word, among some important people,” said Pettigrew. “I think, ultimately, we may need to have a connection with the military. And you mentioned the recovery potential. Well, we might need military help in order to do that because, for example, it might require the use of a heavy lift helicopter and a ship to put it on, all that kind of stuff. So we're looking ahead.”
The team departs the first week of October.
To start, the plan is to use remote sensing, sonar and a hydraulic probe to get a good look at the Taraia Object. Phase one success, said Pettigrew, would be identifying it as Earhart’s lost 10E Electra aircraft.
A full-scale archaeological excavation of the site would follow.
