Rescuers on Tuesday made patchy progress in their search for the AirAsia plane that crashed nine days ago as divers joined the hunt, retrieving two bodies and spotting debris in the Java Sea amid bad weather but there was still no breakthrough in locating the crucial black box.
Multi-national searchers equipped with sophisticated acoustic equipment have been scouring the choppy waters to retrieve the bodies of victims and the debris as well as the Airbus 320's black box recorders, required to determine the cause of the fatal crash.
But persistent bad weather with strong currents, huge waves and high winds has hampered efforts to reach the fuselage believed to contain remaining victims besides the black box. Japan's JS Onami and Malaysia's KD Kasturi ships recovered a body each from the search site today, bringing the total bodies recovered to 39 so far, Command operational director Suryadi Supriyadi told reporters at Pangkalan Bun city.
Onami and Kasturi are ships among vessels from several countries helping the Indonesians in the search and rescue operation after AirAsia Flight QZ8501, en route from Indonesia's Surabaya city to Singapore carrying 162 people on board, mysteriously crashed on December 28.
After days of waiting to join search efforts, divers took advantage of a respite in bad weather at the site to conduct searches on Tuesday. "Some divers have started to dive to the seabed," the National Search and Rescue Agency Republic of Indonesia (BASARNAS) chief Bambang Soelistyo said.
Meanwhile, media reports said a Russian team involved in the search operation has detected objects that could be wreckage from the ill-fated plane. The objects were described as big, red, orange and white in colour. They also found a "black square" object, according to a report by the Jakarta Post.
Supriyadi, who is coordinating the operation from the southern Borneo town of Pangkalan Bun, said ships have not detected any "pings" from the black box's emergency locator beacon, possibly because it was buried in the seabed. "They haven't found anything, maybe because the water is turbid and there is zero visibility," he said. "There's a possibility it is buried in mud."
Indonesian searchers on Monday said they may have found what could be the tail of the crashed flight QZ8501, the section where the crucial black boxes are located.
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