LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
It's been about three years since Malaysia Airline Flight 370 went missing near Australia. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent by scientists using sonar on the search. But the plane's location remains a mystery. Still, it would be wrong to say they didn't find anything - volcanoes, shipwrecks, underwater landslides, mountains larger than Everest. An Australian team announced this past week that the discoveries were made on a slice of the Indian Ocean the size of Pennsylvania, where the researchers were looking for the plane. The region had never been mapped before in that amount of detail.
In fact, most of the world's ocean floors have never been surveyed, which makes these maps so valuable. The Australian scientists say the maps will contribute to research into tsunamis and climate change. It will also help fishermen looking for the right spot to cast their nets. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.