Hello, and welcome to another special edition of Audio News, with the latest from the Taraia Object Expedition. I’m Laura Kennedy, reporting once again from the ship LC Marin Mainiku, which has been anchored off the remote island of Nikumaroro in the Republic of Kiribati. When we last spoke, our team of seventeen was still at sea, testing equipment and preparing to investigate the Taraia Object. That’s a feature in the island’s lagoon thought possibly to be wreckage of the Lockheed Electra flown by Amelia Earhart when she disappeared in 1937. This week, we finally set foot on the island, and the story has taken some unexpected turns.

October 11 began the way many of our mornings have, with a squall drenching the team members who sleep on the ship’s covered rear deck. The captain kindly offered to trade his crew’s quarters for theirs. Our team declined, unanimously. My father, the expedition leader, called them “a stalwart field team,” and I’d have to agree.

That day, my father met with Captain Kameta and second mate Ruabeta on the bridge. Together they worked out a detailed plan for going ashore in two waves. They also brought sobering news. Strong westerly winds would slow our eventual return to Tarawa, adding several days to the voyage. That meant missing our scheduled flights home and rebooking travel for the entire team. Everyone took the news in stride.

The rest of the day was all hands on deck. Philippa Jorissen built shaker screens for sifting sediment from our hydraulic dredge.  I charged our underwater drone, and Michael Krivor and Will Wilson fine-tuned their marine archaeology equipment. Team members Steve Schultz and my father gave a live interview to BBC Television from the ship’s bridge. Later, during a filmed interview on the foredeck, a wave crashed right over the ship’s side onto the deck, a vivid reminder of the conditions we’re working in.

On October 12, we spent the day staging our gear on pallets for the landing, sorted into two groups for the two waves. Our safety officer, Aaron Arrants, gave a full safety briefing. That was timely, because clearing a trail through the island’s forest would be one of our most hazardous tasks. Several I-Kiribati members of the ship’s crew were chosen to join us ashore, and Ruabeta helped us explain the plan to them.

That evening, as the sun went down in a gorgeous sunset, team member Sirisha caught the first glimpse of Nikumaroro on the horizon. At almost that exact moment, Michael hauled in a tuna on one of the fishing lines trailing from the ship’s stern. The crew caught several more, and we had fresh tuna for dinner. It was a fine way to end the long voyage.

On October 13, we went ashore at last. Rough seas forced us to climb down the ship’s side into the boats rather than boarding from the stern. The first wave included Michael, Will, Marc Hagle, and four crew members in our two 17-foot aluminum boats. Thanks to the high tide and the crew’s skillful navigation of the reef, they powered the boats into the lagoon and reached our landing spot on the lagoon shore, nicknamed Club Fred, by 8:30.

The rest of us followed in the ship’s big flat-bottomed boat, landing at the Blasted Channel, a cut through the reef. Our first job was to reopen the Gallagher Highway, a footpath linking the outer beach to the lagoon. Instead of thick brush, we found ground littered with coconuts, fallen palm logs, and tangled vines. Our electric chainsaws handled the vines, but the crew members tackled even thick logs with their machetes, and they clearly loved it. The trail was open by 11 a.m.

After hauling our gear across the island and enjoying a hot lunch delivered from the ship, we ferried people and equipment across the lagoon to the Taraia sand spit. Teams pitched shelters, filled sandbags, and began a walking survey of the spit. Sirisha and I started setting up our technology system.

Then came a surprise. At the location of the Taraia Object, my father spotted the remnant of a tree, a log with a single branch forming a Y shape. Its form resembles what we’ve seen at the site in recent satellite images, but it appears much smaller than the object visible in the 2015 and 2016 imagery. Could a tree have washed in recently? We’re calling it the “Y Object,” and we’re determined to find out.

October 14 was our first full working day on the spit, and it was a big one. Sirisha and I got our Starlink satellite internet running, and a real celebration broke out when the first wifi notifications pinged on people’s phones. We also put up the weather station and made its data public, and got the security camera working. Only the water level sensor remains.

Philippa and her survey team of Meere, Heidi, and Agnes examined the western shore of the Taraia Peninsula and its tip. They found artifacts washed up on the beach, but nothing that appears connected to Amelia Earhart.

At midday, a fierce squall flattened our shelters. Once it passed, the ship’s crew helped us rebuild them, sturdier than before. These men are remarkably skilled and resourceful, and they’ve become essential members of our team.

Meanwhile, Michael and Will completed their underwater remote sensing survey. They towed a magnetometer behind their boat, which detects iron and steel, and followed with side-scan sonar and a sub-bottom profiler, which images layers beneath the lagoon floor.

The ride back to the ship that afternoon was unforgettable. Meere led our I-Kiribati companions in song, with the women and men singing answering choruses. As if on cue, a pod of dolphins appeared alongside our boat, racing with us and leaping into the air.

That evening, Michael and Will brought my father some exciting news. The magnetometer had detected a strong, isolated anomaly along the north shore of the sand spit, only about five to ten meters from the plotted location of the Taraia Object. Something made of iron or steel lies buried in the sediment there.

We’re being careful about what that might mean. The Electra carried relatively little iron or steel, and the anomaly isn’t exactly at the Taraia Object’s location. It could well be debris from the British freighter SS Norwich City, which wrecked on Nikumaroro’s reef in 1929. But we won’t know until we look. The next step is to pinpoint it with a hand-held magnetometer and then uncover it with our hydraulic dredge.

Then the weather turned against us. On October 15, we were assembled on deck and ready to board the boat. Then a forecast showed a big squall due to hit the island just when we’d need to return to the ship. My father made the difficult call to stay aboard rather than risk anyone being stranded ashore. The ship’s officers confirmed that we have ample fuel and food to extend our stay.

At about 4:20 the next morning, hundreds of seabirds, apparently drawn by the ship’s lights, settled all over the vessel. They blocked doorways, and some even got into an outdoor bathroom, where filmmaker Matt Maddaloni pulled them out by hand. At daybreak, the birds flew off.

On both October 16 and 17, Ruabeta led crew members in the flat-bottomed boat to scout the Blasted Channel. Each time, the wind and waves were too dangerous for a landing. Rather than leave the island with our work unfinished, my father decided to extend our expedition and rebook our flights home from Tarawa to October 30. We’ve come too far to turn back now.

We’ve used this downtime to plan and study our data, especially the puzzle of the Y Object. Is it the Taraia Object itself, or something that has come to rest at the same spot? It’s smaller than the Taraia Object and lacks some of its distinctive features. We hope to settle the question soon by probing the lagoon sediment at that location, and by uncovering the source of that magnetic anomaly.

Stay tuned to Audio News for the next chapter of the Taraia Object Expedition. From the Marin Mainiku, off the shores of Nikumaroro, this is Laura Kennedy.