MH370 and the Secrets of the Deep, Dark Southern Indian Ocean
▻http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/03/26/mh370_and_the_secrets_of_the_deep_dark_indian_ocean
n 1900, Jules Verne published The Castaway of the Flag, an adventure novel in the shipwreck fantasy subgenre. To put his Swiss Family Robinson in an excessively remote spot beyond hope of rescue, he plonked them on New Switzerland, an imaginary island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Then, as now, the region’s main features were its remoteness and isolation — capable of hiding an entire island, or simply vanishing a Boeing 777 in its untrafficked vastness.
On March 24, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that the missing Malaysia Airlines fight, which took off March 8 from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing and hasn’t been heard from since, “ended in the Southern Indian Ocean.” The loss of MH370 has for the first time turned the entire world’s attention to this region: Big enough to contain Russia twice, the southern Indian Ocean has been condemned to obscurity by its emptiness and inhospitality. The ongoing search for the wreckage — none of the 239 people on board is believed to have survived — is frustrated by the extreme remoteness and the harsh climate of the presumed crash zone, in the words of Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott, “as close to nowhere as it’s possible to be.”
