How ‘ill-formed little monsters’ on MH370 debris could reveal crash site

After ten years, £100 million and a multi-national, 46,300 square-mile search, pinpointing where MH370 met its ill-fated end could be left to a huddle of tiny sea creatures.

Those creatures, barnacles, were found clinging to the first piece of debris confirmed to be from the Malaysian Airlines flight, which disappeared without a trace on March 8, 2014.

The debris, with the marking 657 BB stenciled on it, was a flaperon from the plane’s right wing.

Flaperons, as the name suggests, are the metal flaps running along the wing’s tail edge which can be seen out the window moving up and down as the plane manoeuvres.

It was more than two years after the plane went silent on its journey from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing that the flaperon washed up. Beached on the golden sands of Réunion Island, a tropical paradise between Madagascar and Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, it was discovered on July 29, 2015. 

Where it had travelled in that time – and more importantly, where it started – has been the subject of intense investigation and speculation since.

While satellite and radar data have offered a sweeping arc across the Indian Ocean that could reasonably be assumed to contain the flight’s last known position, it still represents an impossibly large and incomprehensibly deep wilderness, one unwilling so far to give up the plane.

But those barnacles, branded ill-formed little monsters by Charles Darwin, carry with them a detailed map of their travels.

Just as trees grow rings that offer a snapshot of the climate at the time, barnacles add to their shells layer by layer, day by day – each one a record of the sea’s temperature, oxygen levels and chemical make-up at the time.

Thanks to a worldwide network of buoys, scientists have detailed, historic data mapping the ocean’s temperature, which varies markedly from point to point.

While the science is complicated, simply put, combining this data with the breadcrumb trail left by the barnacles’ shells – a field known as sclerochronology and which can determine sea temperature to within 0.1C – could lead back to where the infant crustaceans, then just tiny larvae floating on the current, first latched on to the flaperon.

Given the size of the largest barnacles, estimated by some to be more than a year old, this means they could have hitched a ride around a year after the crash. Knowing where the debris was at this point could vastly narrow the search area.

Large ocean currents are, overall, highly predictable. The path of anything trapped within them is not. The Great Ocean Conveyor belt circulates water around the globe, a vital element of our stable climate.

But debris on the conveyor belt doesn’t necessarily ride it full circle, meaning tracing the debris’ route isn’t as easy as just finding the nearest current and working backwards.

A gaggle of rubber ducks proved that. 

In 1992, a cargo ship accidentally dropped a container containing 28,000 rubber ducks into the North Pacific. Although all were dropped in the same location, for decades, the ducks washed up on different beaches around the world.

The first arrived in Sitka, Alaska.

They have since landed in Indonesia, Australia and South America, also crossing the Arctic to reach Europe and the east coast of North America.

This accidental experiment highlights how diverse a path debris from the same entry point can spread.

MH370 is no exception. Since that first flaperon was found, debris has been found 2,000 miles away in South Africa, and further out in the Indian Ocean, on Rodrigues island, Mauritius. It has washed up on Madagascar, and made its way around the island, reaching Mozambique and Tanzania.

Some of the debris has been confirmed as coming from the plane, other items highly likely. In total, suspected or confirmed debris has been found in 23 sites across the west Indian Ocean. 

But the sum total is still far from an entire plane. More flaps, panels from the nose and tail of the plane, and a piece of engine cover are only tiny pieces of the puzzle. 

But in December 2022, British engineer Richard Godfrey and MH370 wreckage hunter Blaine Gibson discovered what they reported to be a landing gear door from the underside of the plane. 

Damage to the door, they said, suggested the landing gear had likely been lowered by the captain in the final seconds before it crashed, a final, fruitless act as the plane plummeted towards the ocean.

‘The landing gear was highly likely extended on impact, which in turn supports the conclusion that there was an active pilot until the end of the flight,’ the report said.

It adds that the flight’s final moments were not a gentle glide, but a high-speed dive, putting the plane head-to-head with sheer forces it couldn’t withstand. The aim, Godfrey and Gibson said, was to ensure the plane broke into as many pieces as possible.

‘The crash of MH370 was anything but a soft landing on the ocean,’ they wrote.

If the plane did begin to break up in mid-air, not solely on impact, that further widens the area in which debris first entered the ocean. 

Nevertheless, identifying categorically where just one piece began its journey to the west Indian Ocean will mark a turning point in the search.

Which brings us back those ill-formed little monsters. While they hold one of the most important clues, only the smallest – and therefore youngest – have been made available for scientific testing by French authorities.

Those that hitched a ride first, and can tell us the most, remain untested.

But as Malaysia opens the door to a new official investigation, perhaps these ill-formed little pieces of a tragic puzzle will have the opportunity to give up their secrets, and with them, hope for answers.

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