A Purdue University research team has begun a new search for Amelia Earhart’s missing plane on a remote Pacific island where they will sleep on a boat to evade giant coconut crabs.
The expedition arrived at Nikumaroro Island in the South Pacific on Monday, led by Rick Pettigrew, 71, executive director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute. It marks the first authorized mission to the site in seven years and the first human presence on the Taraia Peninsula in more than 15 years. The island, part of the Republic of Kiribati, is infested with coconut crabs measuring up to three feet wide and weighing nine pounds.
The search has revived a macabre theory about Earhart’s final hours: that the aviation pioneer crashed or landed on the island and was devoured by the crabs after sustaining injuries. British settlers discovered 13 bones, including a skull, on Nikumaroro in 1940 and reported that coconut crabs had scattered many of them across the terrain. Doctors at the time identified the remains as belonging to a short European male, though some anthropologists challenged that assessment.
To test whether the crabs could have dispersed human remains, the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) conducted an experiment using a pig carcass. The crabs swarmed it, stripped most of the flesh, and moved some bones as far as 60 feet away. “This tells us crabs drag bones,” TIGHAR’s Tom King told National Geographic.
The 1940 bones have since undergone modern analysis. National Geographic archaeologist Fredrik Hiebert’s team located possible fragments of the skull in a museum in Tarawa, Kiribati. Forensic anthropologists determined the remains belonged to an adult female, but Hiebert told Radio Kiribati in 2021 that DNA results pointed to a young Polynesian woman who lived in Kiribati approximately 1,000 years ago, according to Radio New Zealand.
The current expedition is focused on a single target known as the Taraia Object. Satellite imagery has captured images of the peculiar formation dating back to 1937, the year Earhart vanished. The object is believed to sit only 10 feet from the lagoon shore and roughly five feet below the surface. Other explorers remain skeptical. Ric Gillespie, 77, executive director of TIGHAR, searched the exact spot in 2001 and 2007 and said in 2025: “We’ve looked there in that spot, and there’s nothing there.”
Pettigrew offered a more optimistic assessment in a Monday statement, calling it “incredibly rewarding” to be so close to completing the inspection of the Taraia Object. His team is currently transporting equipment, clearing dense jungle vegetation, and establishing operations at the island’s central lagoon.
The search methodology combines surface surveys with underwater technology. Starting at the southwestern Taraia Peninsula, researchers will scan for surface artifacts and use a boat to lay transect lines in the surrounding water. An underwater metal detector called a magnetometer will scan for metallic debris, while sonar pulses will probe beneath the seafloor. A hydroprobe and induction dredge will then determine the object’s depth and orientation while removing sediment for visual inspection.
Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, disappeared on July 2, 1937, along with navigator Fred Noonan, 44, during their attempted around-the-world flight. Their Lockheed 10E Electra ran low on fuel and vanished over the Pacific. NASA records indicate British colonists found a woman’s shoe, airplane parts, and a box containing a sextant on Nikumaroro in the late 1930s, while subsequent explorations uncovered eaten animal bones and evidence of campfires. The Purdue University team from Indiana now hopes modern technology might finally resolve the 88-year-old mystery.
The expedition continues its work at the lagoon site.