Submarine Hunt for Malaysian Plane Halted After Six Hours

A submarine scouring the floor of the Indian Ocean for the missing Malaysian jet had to abort its maiden voyage after descending too deep, providing investigators with less than

The Bluefin-21 vessel was forced back to the surface by a built-in safety feature after dropping below its limit of 4,500 meters (14,800 feet), Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Centre said in an e-mailed statement. No objects of interest were found in the six hours of data that was captured, said Daniel Marciniak, a spokesman for the U.S. Seventh Fleet, which operates the Bluefin-21, in an e-mailed statement.

“That’s not good news,” Robin Beaman, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, said by phone. “The critical thing is it needs to be down close to the seafloor.”

Source: Bloomberg