The mystery of Air France Flight 447 keeps its grip

Late on the morning of April 3, the expedition ship Alucia rocked violently on the South Atlantic Ocean in the middle of a squall. On the aft deck,rift gold the crew huddled together in rain slickers and gazed across the heaving seas to a yellow blur on the horizon.
This was an unmanned reconnaissance submarine carrying 15,000 photographs that they were desperate to see. But it had buoyed to the surface just as the squall sprang up, and with 30-knot winds and meter-high swells that splashed over the stern, it was too dangerous to retrieve the sub. So they watched and waited.
For eight days, the Alucia had been trolling the ocean near a spot known as the L. K. P., or the last known position of Flight 447,rift gold the Air France jet that vanished in June 2009, halfway between South America and Africa. Three other search teams had gone looking for the wreckage, but this was the Alucia’s first try. The ship took along three Remus 6000 submarines, some of the world’s most advanced underwater search vehicles, that swept the seafloor in 20-hour runs, then surfaced to deliver sonar imagery to the Alucia’s scientific crew.
So far, they had not found the plane, but the day before, one scientist pointed at something unusual on the monitor and said, ‘‘ What about this?’’