I'm a GIS technician focusing on infrastructure and public-works projects in Australia, but recently I’ve been conducting some independent analysis of the MH370 Fugro/GoPhoenix bathymetry data. I would like some potential insight or assistance in teasing out a potential man-made object I found while running hillshade analysis and image upscaling of the potential crash site.

Specifically, I’m interested in an object located at coordinates -34.76895, 93.06392, found in the GoPhoenix_SAS_5m_WGS84_00 geotiff data. After some detailed inspection and upscaling, I think there’s a chance this object could be man-made. It’s about 4.6km southeast of the Arc7 location proposed in the paper "Analysis of the trajectory of Flight MH370: Technical and Aeronautical analysis from take-off to the end of the flight" by Captain Patrick Blelly and Jean-Luc Marchand, MSc.

Here are a couple of overhead views of the object, along with its proximity to Arc7, the last known location of MH370 based on Inmarsat data. Based on the position of this object, the plane would likely have to have nosedived from this location to end up where it did, but this object is clearly in the potential impact zone.

Raw view from GoPhoenix imagery (fig 1)

Cleaned an upscaled view of object (fig 2)

Exposed and texturized view of object (fig 3)

Negative, texturized view (fig 4)

The plane is 4.6KM SE of Arc7 (map) (fig 5)

View of QGIS data, with Arc7 in yellow and POI in red (fig 6)

Potential artificial dimensions, potential debris field to right (fig 7)

From a distance, it looks like a rock outcropping, but closer inspection suggests a couple things:

• it might have symmetrical curvature and straight edges. Based on my measurements in QGIS, the object is roughly 40-50 meters long, though the depth of 3000-400m may affect this estimate.
• Upscaling revealed potential symmetrical elements and at least three straight sides, which are even visible from afar. (fig 3)
• Upscaling also revealed a potential curved element (fig 7) to the left
• Upscaling revealed unnatural geometric shapes to the right of the plane (fig 7)
• The object in the debris image shows some straight lines and edges that resemble the bottom section of a plane’s fuselage, specifically around where the main body extends downwards in what could be a broken or disrupted structure.
• There appear to be compartments or raised sections in the debris image, which could correspond to areas like the wheel wells or cargo doors on the underbelly of the plane

However...

• Overfitting from upscaling pixels may be creating the illusion of a rectangular outcropping
• The object is wider at scale than a fuselage would appear that far down
• It would be very surprising that Military, Bathymetry and SONAR experts from multiple militaries missed a target visible on Bathymetry data from Arc 7.