Smithsonian's Dorothy Cochrane would "abandon Nikumaroro" in the Earhart search
A Purdue team is studying a shape in a Pacific lagoon, but the aviation curator tells CTV Your Morning the evidence points to Howland Island instead.
CTV Your Morning
Story of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 106,241 views a day, 174 times a normal first day on this channel (612).
New Clues Reignite Search for Amelia Earhart's Missing Plane | Your Morning
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- 0:00The host sets up the 20th search for Earhart's plane, carried out by 17 Purdue researchers on Nikumaroro.
- 0:30Cochrane says she doubts Earhart had enough fuel to fly that far south.
- 1:26Satellite images show the submerged "Taraia object" in the island's lagoon.
- 1:49Cochrane says it could be natural debris, a boat or rock rather than aircraft wreckage.
- 2:34Radio signals and flight calculations, she argues, put Earhart near Howland Island.
- 3:49She recommends dropping Nikumaroro and backing Nauticos' search near Howland.
Seventeen Purdue University researchers are on Nikumaroro, a speck of coral in the central Pacific, on what the host counts as the 20th expedition to look for Amelia Earhart's lost plane. CTV Your Morning invited Dorothy Cochrane, longtime curator for general aviation and women in aviation at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, to talk about it. She did not bring much optimism.
"Well, it's another trip to Nikumaroro is the way I look at it," she says from Woodbridge, Virginia. Her first objection is fuel: "I don't believe that she had the amount of fuel to make it down there."
The show then puts up the clue behind this trip, satellite images of the "Taraia object" sitting underwater in the island's lagoon, captured on dates from 2016 to 2024. Cochrane says it could just as easily be natural debris, a boat or a rock formation. "I don't believe it's a part of her aircraft."
The title promises new clues. What the interview delivers is a close look at why one expert doubts them. Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan vanished in July 1937 while heading for Howland Island to refuel on her round-the-world attempt, and Cochrane reads the radio signals and flight calculations as placing her near that island, not hundreds of miles south. Her advice is blunt: "Well, I would abandon Nikumaroro." She would rather see the effort go to Nauticos, the firm searching the deep water near Howland, whose work excites her because it is "following the facts of the flight."
The five-minute segment drew close to 59,000 views in its first nine hours, a rare kind of start for the show's interview clips. It also landed alongside a fast-moving Short about Tesla's "flying car," on a day when the morning show's mysteries and machines both found their way off the TV schedule.
The comment section, usually close to silent under these interviews, filled up with people who already know the case well. Several echo Cochrane's doubts and bring up Robert Ballard's search of the island in 2019, which came back empty. Others raise the old reports of radio messages heard after the disappearance and the shipwreck that sits on Nikumaroro's reef. And a few simply couldn't resist a joke about Wilson, the volleyball from Cast Away.
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What viewers say
You would have more luck finding Wilson
@davidwilliams1196See it on YouTubeShe is safe and sound in the Delta quadrant captain Catherine Janeway will find her
@johnsonslawnserviceministr4038See it on YouTubemy old highschool science teacher got lost at sea back in the sixties along this very island when he and seven others set sail that day. Perhaps that thing in the water is the boat my teacher was on.
@vaccumsealedSee it on YouTube
4 more comments
Here's the real question, are there any decent surf breaks on that island?
@PatJimenez-w7oSee it on YouTubeAfter she disappeared, Ham radio operators thought they heard her say “HMS New York City”…there’s a wreck on that island called “HMS Norwich City”. That’s too big of a coincidence…
@pauldavis4287See it on YouTubeBob Ballard did'nt find anything in 2019.
@dspain0214See it on YouTubeI'm guessing that tree they seen on satellite was just a tree because not one person has mentioned that object at all since they got out there
@OscarVaughnSee it on YouTube
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- Channel
- CTV Your Morning
- Subscribers
- 230,000 ▲ 1,000 this week
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 869,839
- Channel views, pace per day
- 177,742 (on a normal day: 86,249)
- Video published
- October 16, 2026
- Video views so far
- 58,699 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 106,241
The numbers
A short interview with a skeptical guest moved far beyond what this morning show's clips usually do on their first day, and its comments section came alive with it.
💡 Test your knowledge
Which famous shipwreck did Robert Ballard's team locate in 1985?
Ballard's joint French-American expedition found the Titanic's wreck in the North Atlantic in September 1985.