Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared in 2014, on route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.  After an intense 34-months of searching, no signs of the plane have been found.  The fleet of search vehicles have, however produced an unexpected result: a new and incredibly detailed map of the area’s Ocean floor.

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Survey ships assigned to search for Flight 370 collected a massive amount of data along a 100,000 square mile strip of the southeastern Indian Ocean.  With the hunt called off, researchers took that data and turned it into some high-resolution maps of the seafloor.

“over 85 percent of our world’s oceans have yet to be explored un such detail.”
– Kim Picard, Geoscience Australia

And data surround this particular area is especially sparse: the so called MH370 area where the search took place is one of the more remote and unexplored areas on our planet.

The new ocean floor maps, which were released in July, could enable new discoveries about the plate tectonics in the area, it’s current pattern and different habitats.

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