Rick Pettigrew said the Taraia Object expedition has started an underwater survey in Nikumaroro’s lagoon, using Nikumaroro Island historical survey images and new field tools to test an anomaly tied to the search for Amelia Earhart. The 17-person team began work on Wednesday, Oct. 14, after traveling five days by sea from Tarawa, Kiribati.
The first field step centered on the Taraia Object, which was first noticed in satellite imagery in 2020 and later seen on aerial photos from 1938. The maritime archaeology team began with a magnetometer, which detects ferrous metals, and side-scan sonar, which searches for objects under sediment on the lagoon floor.
Rick Pettigrew and the Taraia Object
Pettigrew, the executive director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute, said, "We’re following our game plan," and added, "It’s too early to reach conclusions as we’ve got a lot of science left to apply." The expedition’s goal is to search for evidence of the castaway hypothesis, the theory that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan landed on Nikumaroro after disappearing in July 1937.
That leaves the survey with a narrow purpose: identify whether the lagoon-floor anomaly can yield data before anyone draws a conclusion about what the Taraia Object is. The tools on the water are built for that step, not for a final answer.
Sirisha Bandla on Nikumaroro
Sirisha Bandla, a Boilermaker on the expedition, was shown holding a coconut crab on Nikumaroro as the team worked through its first day on the island. The expedition also set up a solar-powered tech system onshore, and it was operating successfully to support monitoring devices including a remote camera and water level transducer.
Those devices are set to provide ongoing information about Nikumaroro’s weather and tidal flows that has never before been available. The team returns to the Marin Mainiku each evening to sleep on board while the data from the magnetometer and side-scan sonar is analyzed before later search techniques are used.
Purdue Research Foundation and Purdue University
The Taraia Object expedition is a joint effort between the Archaeological Legacy Institute, Purdue Research Foundation and Purdue University. Later search techniques include a hydroprobe and a water induction dredge to remove sediment from identified objects, which is the next step after the current survey data is reviewed.
The work sits inside a longer search tied to Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan, but the field team’s immediate task is more limited: gather usable underwater data, compare it with the 1938 and 2020 imagery, and decide whether anything on the lagoon floor can be isolated for follow-up.
