A sonar image taken more than 16,000 feet underwater displayed an outline of what seemed to be Amelia Earhart’s missing aircraft. 

Deep Sea Vision, the exploration company that released this image, believes it could be Amelia Earhart’s lost Lockheed Electra. 

Aiming to become the first woman to fly around the world, Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, departed from Papua New Guinea on the morning of July 7, 1937. After nearing Howland Island, their next destination, the aircraft disappeared from the radar.

“[The] attempt to find Earhart that went on for 16 days, involved nine vessels, 4000 crewmen, and 66 aircrafts at a cost of more than $4 million dollars,” said the National Air and Space Museum. 

Despite such efforts, no one was able to find her or Noonan.

However, after 87 years, Tony Romeo, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Deep Sea Vision and former US Air Force Intelligence officer, believes his company has found Earhart’s Lockheed Electra. 

Using an advanced autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), Deep Sea Vision explored the sea, mapping it through sonar technology. 

“It is impossible to identify anything from a sonar image alone,” said David Jourdan, president of Nauticos, another deep-sea exploration company. “The artifact could be damaged in unpredictable ways altering its shape.”

Since the image of the potential aircraft lacks important features from Earhart’s Lockheed Electra, such as its twin engines, Romeo plans to send a remote-operated vehicle (ROV) later this year to explore the area. 

“While it is possible that this could be Amelia’s plane, it is too premature to say that definitively,” said Andrew Pietruszka, an underwater archaeologist at the University of California, San Diego. “It could be something geologic or some other plane.” 

Romeo hopes to confirm his findings once the new ROV captures more information.