No underwater pulses detected in almost a week. Ocean Shield will cease searching with the towed pinger locator later today (Monday) and deploy the autonomous underwater vehicle Bluefin-21. It's a probe equipped with side-scan sonar -- acoustic technology that creates pictures from the reflections of sound rather than light. Each deployment will last 24 hours. It will take two hours for the Bluefin-21 to get down to the bottom of the ocean. Then it will scour the ocean bed for 16 hours, and take another two hours to resurface. It will take take another four hours to download and analyze the data collected.
The Australian ship Ocean Shield detected an oil slick Sunday evening, but it is unclear where the oil came from. A 2-liter sample has been collected for examination, but it will take a few days.
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