PAGO PAGO, American Samoa — An expedition of aviation enthusiasts looking for the remains of U.S. aviator Amelia Earhart left American Samoa on Sunday on its way to search a remote Pacific atoll in the tiny nation of Kiribati.
Earhart disappeared on July 2, 1937, while trying to find land in her Lockheed Electra A-10E aircraft during an attempt to fly around the world.
She went missing on a 2,556-mile leg between New Guinea and a refueling stop on Howland Island, a U.S. territory on the equator just east of the international dateline.
The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) mission plans to investigate for up to a month an area of sea around Nikumararo, an uninhabited atoll around 410 miles south of Howland.
The search is based on satellite images, which may show rusting metal in shallow water just offshore of Nikumararo, in an area where native fishermen are said to have once seen the wreckage of an aircraft. "We're not investigating a new Earhart theory," TIGHAR said on its Internet Web Site www.tighar.org.
"We're re-investigating the oldest Earhart theory," it said in a reference to a U.S. navy search of the area for the aviator and her navigator, Fred Noonan, in 1937.
Most researchers believe Earhart's plane ran out of fuel and crashed into the Pacific near Howard Island, less than an hour after the aviator radioed that they were lost and low on gas.
Sailing on a Fiji-based 120-foot launch, the group plans to investigate four theories, ranging from a dive on possible aircraft remains 60 feet (18 metres) underwater to a check of erect coral slabs on the tiny island said to contain bones found when Kiribati settlers arrived on the island in 1938.
The expedition includes Earhart's great nephew Jim Morrissey and is headed up by TIGHAR executive director Ric Gillespie.
A private ocean exploration company, Nauticos Corp; www.nauticos.com, from Hanover, Maryland, is also planning a search for Earhart's remains during the northern hemisphere winter at year-end.
Nauticos is focusing on a 500 square mile (800 sq km) area of sea, 360 miles (570 km) northwest of Nikumararo, using a sonar scanner to check 17,000 feet (5 km) below the surface of the Pacific Ocean.
Now in its 13th year, TIGHAR's search for Earhart has led to four expeditions to the Central Pacific at a cost of $1.6 million.
The non-profit group, based in Wilmington, Delaware, investigates aviation-related historical puzzles such as the disappearance of Earhart.