During the search of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean, an uncharted shipwreck has been discovered.
According to Peter Foley, the search team leader, the finding was fascinating, but it was not the one they were looking for. The discovery showed that if the flight was lost in the same search area, it would be discovered.
Flight MH370 vanished the previous year during its flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers on board.
Up to the moment, there is no trace that has been found and still cannot be explained the reason for the disappearance of MH370.
So far, the teams have been searching on a 60,000 sq km (23,000 sq mile) area off the coast of Western Australia, where the plane is assumed to have crashed.
After sonar observations in the area, a cluster of objects was detected under the sea, in approximately 4 km (2,5 miles) depth.
In the sonar images among the debris an anchor was visible and the officials suspected that it was not the missing Malaysian aircraft, but sent down an underwater camera to investigate the findings.
"Obviously, we're disappointed that it wasn't the aircraft," said the representative of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB).
"And this event has really demonstrated that the systems, people and the equipment involved in the search are working well. It's shown that if there's a debris field in the search area, we'll find it," added Mr. Foley.
According to Michael McCarthy, a senior maritime archaeologist at the West Australian Maritime Museum, the shipwreck is of a cargo ship, dated for the 19th Century.
"We've got quite a lot of stories about ships that sank in the Indian Ocean mid-voyage and you would be struggling to tell which is which unless you had a complete catalogue of all the ones lost," he said.
One month ago, after a meeting of Australian, Malaysian and Chinese ministers, who discussed the progress in the searching operations, it was announced that the search area would be doubled if nothing was found in the current locations.