it's a deliberate analogy because we don't know that much about most of the abyssal oceans.equivalent to what we know about the dark side of the moon. noaa, national oceans and atmospheric administration, maintains a system of buoys around the world in the oceans that provide realtime data about what's going on in the oceans. and unfortunately that part of the southern indian ocean is one of the worst-covered areas in terms of providing realtime data about ocean conditions. and it's very poorly surveyed on the bottom. and it's a tremendously difficult place to look for anything. >> alastair and everyone else, stick around because when we come right back we're going to get more of your questions. everything from black boxes to how much this search is costing. that's next. [ male announcer ] we all think about life insurance. but when we start worrying about tomorrow, we miss out on the things that matter today. ♪ at axa, we offer advice and help you break down your insurance goals into small, manageable steps. because when you plan for tomorrow, it helps you live for today. c

we don't know much about the abyssal oceans. ys around the world in the oceans that provide realtime data about the oceans. and unfortunately that part of the ocean is one of the worst covered areas about providing conditions. >> stick around. when we come back we'll get more of your questions, everything from black boxes to how how much this search is costing. that's next. looks like you started to make something. ♪ ♪ [ female announcer ] cheerios. with flavors your heart will love. . >>> back to our special coverage of the disappearance of flight 370. i will start with richard quest. this is from edwin. he wants to know how much money is being spent on investigation and search for possible rescue of flight 370. >> we don't have a full number. the u.s. says is it about $2.5 million so far. the department of defense has allocated $4 million so far. i'm expecting that number to go much higher. but as long as they are using military assets, those assets already exist. so you're talking about fuel, overtime and all those sort of thi

. >> reporter: the flight went into the ocean and a submarine like the abyss were to find it experts say international maritime law does not apply. aviation law established in 1944 determines which country is ultimately in charge of the investigation. >> if the airplane crashes on the high seas, the jurisdiction is with the state of registry of the aircraft nap is malaysia in this case. >> reporter: as costs mount, the question, when does this end? >> they'll have to re-evaluate the assets they're using and what they're doing in the next week or two. they can't allow this to go on because it will get so costly. >> reporter: the pingers on these so-called black boxes which are orange have seven or eight days left with this pinger. interestingly the new regulations going forward next year will require batteries that last for 90 days which, of course would be useful now. >> kerry sanders this morning. thank you. >>> more rain in the forecast today in washington state which will not help the crews looking to recover victims from the debris of that massive mudslide. but there has been wel

. >> it is the most amazing documentary about the ocean and you learn about the abyssal plain and allre are ecosystems under the water. there are beaches under the water. there's molten lava. there are volcanos. there are earthquakes that happen that we never even know about that are miles down. and there's life that we don't know about. >> absolutely. >> yeah, i mean, what -- i just draw it back to the conversation we were having slightly earlier in terms of they're up against it on the technology side. the technology is there to detect huge lumps of metal that are under the surface. we're talking about relatively small bits of debris, the buoys, will find it incredibly hard to detect. yes, they're deploying the day to day have methods of anti-submarine hunting and maritime surveillance. but it's in a completely different context. and the reason -- >> the reason i say that is because if this comes in contact, say some sort of volcanic activity under the ocean, then the pressure -- you start to limit whether or not you're going to actually find these voice recorders or the black boxes

dive deep into the abyss in a one-man submarine, 1,000 feet below the surface to explore life at the bottom of the oceanllagher is live with more. you cooperate get this suit on and do this for us, like do an experiment in the suit? >> they haven't tested it yet. i would do it. and i if you're a fan of people leak jacque cousteau and the work of james cameron, this is astonishing. it pushes the limits of undersea exploration. a thousand feet down, and when you go down there the pressure is 30 times greater than on the surface, but with this suit it would allow a diver to go down and stay down for up to 50 hours. can you imagine two days underisn't that right but what separates this iron-man like suit from the small sub in recents that james cameron used, the suit allows a diver to be hands on. it has 36 joints so you can bend your knees, bend your arms. there are also foot thrusters so the divers can hop around look the astronauts did on the moon. and even though the gloves like kinds of clumsy they have very precise tools in them to actually grab on to the undersea life we have never been able to study

for as long as they run lines over just open ocean, that unfortunately there's a lot of things that run through one's mind and you're just looking into the abyss, if you will. >> yeah. and that theme has gone throughout, tim, right? this idea that we have tremendous technology but as those of us look at this and learn about the process there is a lot of human error and luck involved. i want to read from "sea technology" magazine which wrote about a survey you did in 2012 and they say that even after a target of interest is located, "the time consuming process of making high frequency short range classification passes with the side scan sonar that was more luck than skill." explain that. >> even with side scan sonar when you're looking out it's taking pictures of a thousand meters on each side or 500 meters on each side depending on what you have it programmed for, a plane would show up as a shiny object dot which could be geology. it could be a rock. so you have to have a trained eye and look at these objects. then you have to go back again and get a higher frequency lower pass over that object. we'll get a little resolution. then you go back

ocean is 13,000 feet. the depth of that trench, 26,000. so if that chunk got underwater and then gets into the trench it's basically like going into an abyss. >> wow. ginger, thanks very much. >>> let's get more on this from our aviation consultant, steve began yard. ginger outlined the challenges there so well. on the surface the ocean is so rough and moving so fast and then again it's also so deep. >> that's right, george. another thing to consider here is the current moves one way and the wind moves another and so the current is pushing that debris along and the wind is pushing it in a different direction so not only moving it away from the impact site but it's actually disbursing it. and i think that goes to a point here that we need to consider this search in two separate entities here. there's a surface search where there's debris on the water, they have airplanes out there looking out the window but then there's a subsurface search and that's what the australians are asking for help with. in the air france mishap the u.s. navy provided underwater -- sort of like microphones on a batmobile that flies around at low altitudes next to t