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The latest research into Amelia Earhart’s plane has resurfaced a theory about what could have caused the legendary explorer’s demise: giant carnivorous crabs.
A team from Indiana’s Purdue University arrived on the remote island of Nikumaroro in the South Pacific on Monday to begin their work, but they will spend nights away from the site on their boat because the island is overrun by coconut crabs measuring three feet wide and weighing 9 pounds.
Earhart, the first woman to make a solo flight across the Atlantic, disappeared with navigator Fred Noonan on July 2, 1937, after her twin-engine Lockheed 10E Electra plane ran out of fuel and disappeared over the Pacific while attempting to circumnavigate the world.
His disappearance sparked decades of search missions, investigations and conspiracy theories.
One of the most credible theories is that Earhart crashed or landed on the island, in the Republic of Kiribati, and the injured pilot was eaten by crabs.
British settlers found a woman’s shoe, airplane parts and a box containing a navigation tool called a sextant in the late 1930s, and subsequent explorations revealed eaten animal bones and evidence of campfires, according to NASA.
The crustaceans, with an excellent sense of smell, prey on small mammals and seabirds, using their sharp claws to tear apart tough exteriors.
Earhart, 39, and Noonan, 44, were flying to nearby Howland Island, about 400 miles north of Nikumarono, when their plane disappeared.
The Purdue research team is studying a particular object visible in satellite images that could be the plane. Investigators are currently working to transport equipment, clear jungle vegetation and set up operations in the central Nikumaroro lagoon. They will begin their investigation in the Taraia peninsula, in the southwest of the island.
They will examine the edge of the peninsula to see if there are any artifacts on the surface and take a boat to draw transect lines in the surrounding waters. Transect lines are measuring tapes that help scientists establish a search area and mark where they looked.
To detect any metal in the area, they will use an underwater metal detector called a magnetometer.
The team will also deploy sonar technology to detect the object beneath the seafloor. Sonar technology emits pulses of sound into the water. If there is anything in the path of the sound wave, it will bounce off the object and return a reading.
Finally, the team will use two tools called a hydroprobe and an induction dredge, which will help determine the depth and direction of the object and remove sediment for visual inspection.
The object is believed to be just 10 feet from the shore of the lagoon and about five feet below the surface. Photos of the object were taken dating back to the year the plane disappeared.
Other explorers who searched the lagoon for Earhart’s plane say what was seen in satellite images is a false trail.
“We looked at that location, and there’s nothing there,” Ric Gillespie, executive director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, which searched there in 2001 and 2007, told NBC News last year.
It has been seven years since the last authorized expedition to Nikumaroro and more than 15 years since anyone has visited the Taraia Peninsula.
“It is incredibly gratifying to be so close to completing our inspection of the Taraia object and potentially solving, finally, the exceptional mystery of the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan more than 89 years ago,” said expedition leader Rick Pettigrew, executive director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute, in a statement released Monday.
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