Most folks know I am a history enthusiast. Even as a boy I was interested in the past, so this next subject is "right up my alley," as my mom used to say.
The people at Purdue Research Foundation announced last week they are putting together a joint expedition with the Archaeological Legacy Institute on 5 November 2025, to confirm the findings of Amelia Earhart's plane, which disappeared somewhere in the South Pacific in July 1937. Many attempts have been made to locate the craft, but none have been successful.
Over the years, researchers have speculated that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, made an emergency landing on a deserted island called Nikomaroro. Within a lagoon on the island, there is an anomaly called the "Taraia Object," found by satellite, which could be Earhart's Lockheed Electra.
Well, I had to look for myself. So I fired up Google Earth and started searching for Nikomaroro Island. I admit I could not have found it on my own; it is truly a mere speck in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is about as isolated as you can get from any living creature on the planet.
Once I located the island, I started hunting for the Taraia Object (I had no visual references to follow because I am stubborn adventurous and I wanted to see if I could find it myself). The island is very small so the search did not take long. And yes, I quickly found something: off the northwestern shore of the island two circular objects and a roughly triangular shaped object with straight edges just 700 feet offshore.
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| I quickly noticed something just 700 feet off the northwestern shore. |
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| An angle looking southeast. What is this? This debris (if I can call it that) is submerged in shallow water offshore. |
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| Looking directly above, the object to the left does not look like a naturally occurring object. And what are the two round objects in the left-center and right-center? They look like manmade objects, don't they? If you look closely there is debris scattered all over. |
Of course, I thought I found the Taraia Object, but I was wrong. Below is (or was) the Taraia Object:
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| The Taraia Object is the faint dark line in the direct center of the image, just offshore, above this spit of land. Older satellite imagery showed a tube like structure, which was thought to be an aircraft fuselage. However, other researchers say it is nothing more than an uprooted palm tree. No longer visible, researchers think it probably has been covered in silt. |
What I did not know, until I looked deeper into this mystery, is the most common hypothesis is that Earhart and Noonan set up "Camp Zero" on the northwestern shore of the island and sent radio signals from the damaged aircraft, which is how investigators were able to eventually focus on Nikumaroro Island. The northwestern shore is where I found these anomalous objects!
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| The Taraia Object is at location B. The anomaly I found is in location A. North is at the top of the image. |
The object I found and the location of the Taraia Object are some distance away from each other, but 88 years of tides, pounding waves, cyclones and storms could easily have carried debris all across this small island. If it is submerged, it is like finding a needle in a haystack.
At least 12 expeditions have explored Nikumaroro Island since 1989. Human bones have been found on the island, as well as a woman's shoe, a compact case and a jar of freckle cream, which Earhart was known to use. This seems to be strong evidence; however, researchers are still looking for her Lockheed Electra and no evidence of an aircraft has ever been found there. It is also possible the plane was carried out to sea and we will never find it.
Will this research team finally be able to solve this mystery? Furthermore, what did I find on the northwestern shore of the island? Is it parts of Earhart's plane? Maybe an old shipwreck? Perhaps we'll find out in November!
