A team of researchers is sailing to one of the most remote islands on the planet to examine a strange shape in the shallows that could be linked to aviation's greatest unsolved disappearance.
The expedition, run by the US-based Archaeological Legacy Institute together with Purdue University, has set off from Kiribati's capital, Tarawa, aboard the Marin Mainiku, a vessel operated by the Kiribati National Shipping Line. Its destination is Nikumaroro, an uninhabited atoll roughly 830 miles away, where satellite imagery from 2020 picked up what researchers have nicknamed the Taraia Object — a form in the shallow water near the lagoon's edge that resembles the wreckage of a small aircraft. Intriguingly, the object also appears in aerial photographs taken as far back as 1938.
Why Nikumaroro? Amelia Earhart vanished on 2 July 1937 during her attempt to circle the globe in a twin-engine Lockheed Electra, along with navigator Fred Noonan. After leaving Lae in Papua New Guinea, the pair never reached their refuelling stop at Howland Island. The standard account holds that they ran into navigation and communication trouble and ditched in the ocean when fuel ran out. But no confirmed wreckage has ever been found, which keeps alternative theories alive — including the idea that Earhart and Noonan managed to land on Nikumaroro and survived, at least for a time, as castaways.
If the team confirms the Taraia Object is aircraft wreckage, a second challenge follows: proving it belonged to Earhart's Electra. Sceptics remain. Ric Gillespie, a veteran researcher of the case, thinks the object could simply be a fallen tree. He has long argued Earhart may have reached Nikumaroro — pointing to signs of 1930s human activity and bones found there in the 1940s — but believes the plane itself broke apart and slipped beneath the waves.
This is not the first promising lead to fizzle out. In 2024, sonar images near Howland Island seemed to show a plane on the seabed 4,877 metres down; closer inspection revealed a natural rock formation. And a 2019 expedition chased a photograph that appeared to show landing gear near Nikumaroro, without result. Whether this attempt breaks the pattern or joins the list of dead ends, it's a reminder of how far researchers will go — literally — to close the book on 1937.
For travellers, the story is also a rare window onto Kiribati's far-flung Phoenix Islands, some of the least visited and most pristine atolls on Earth. You won't be hitching a ride on the research vessel, but the saga shows just how far off the map this corner of the Pacific really is — a fortnight's shipping route from anywhere, and all the more fascinating for it.
Story reported by Getaway South Africa.
